


no such thing

by dropofrum (95echelon)



Category: DCU, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Identity Porn, M/M, i got way too many feels way too much emotion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 14:16:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15865290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/95echelon/pseuds/dropofrum
Summary: It's the same old story:Girl falls in love with prettyboy vigilante, girl falls in bed with insanely hot coworker, boy seriously contemplates a schizophrenic breakdown.(Or, Sansa is Lois Lane, Jon Snow is some weird composite of Clark Kent and Batman, and for a story that was supposed to be funny, there's more angsty fucking in this one than I ever intended.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd, as ever. but i might actually finish this one, so there's that.

  1. in which there’s world-building and ominous exposition with no real pay-off (i’m running on coffee and fumes, sorry)




 

The first time Sansa hears about the Ghost, it’s early in January, on a cold winter evening. Dad comes home late from work, a stack of tan folders tucked under his arm. 

 

She’s not supposed to be listening in, strictly - Dad’s job as Police Commissioner of Winterfell, and Mum’s as Assistant DA means a lot of their work is highly classified - but it’s an old, bad habit she can’t shake off everytime she visits home. With Arya beside her now, it’s surprisingly easy to snuggle into the crook behind the kitchen door, breathing lightly and holding still, listening to Mum and Dad talk in soft, low voices.

 

“Again?” Mom asks, with a faint of clink of silverware as she pours two steaming mugs of coffee.

 

“Third one this week,” Dad says. He sounds exhausted. “Thanks, love.”

 

“Was it the same MO?”

 

“Knife between the ribs, same as always. Half-foot long, serrated edge. They found the body - lungs filled with blood. He asphyxiated.”

 

“Who was the vic?”

 

There’s a thump of something heavy hitting the table. One of the folders. “Alec Turner. 28, male, Caucasian. Convicted on 6 counts of child molestation. Let out a month ago due to overpopulation.” Rustling, as Mom flipped through Alec Turner’s unsavory record. "He was- Cat, they found him in Crasters Alley. His corpse. They found him near the dumpsters by the Henshaw Court orphanage.”

 

“Oh. Oh _God_.”

 

Ned sighed explosively. “The Ghost- He probably _saved_ some kid from Turner tonight. Probably- And now I have to hunt him down and put him behind bars because _that’s-_  apparently, _that’s_ justice.”

 

“Ned…” 

 

Sansa and Arya shared a quiet, long look in the dark, and came to an unspoken decision, sneaking away as quietly as they came, on silent, padded feet.

* * *

 

  1. in which sansa’s a pretty smart cookie, jon’s a precious virginal baby with an ass like a hundred-dollar stripper, and everyone’s got secret, heavily repressed trauma




 

January bled into February, and four more victims bled into the grey-stained snow of Winterfell’s back alleys and shadowy byways.

 

Winterfell was in uproar. 

 

The Daily Planet started a Ghostwatch column on the front page, and got Margaery Tyrell herself to use her blade-sharp, Page Six pen for a daily four inches of scathing innuendo.

 

Photos started to come in on the wire - a shadowy figure perched atop a gargoyle in Midtown. The flutter of a cape silhouetted against a windowpane. The barest smudge of a face at the docks where they found a body the next day, half-hidden under some kind of domino mask, lips pressed into a hard line.

 

Dad came home later and later, and by the time February was over, he’d slept at the precinct nearly three nights every week.

 

And Sansa, who loved her job, was started to fray a little, come apart at the edges. 

 

She loved writing for the crime beat, honestly - she’d done her nickel at metro and human interest, fluff and society gossip, the shit they had thought a rich girl like her would be good at, the kind of vapid, puerile excreta she had thought she wanted to write too, until-

 

Until.

 

Until Joffrey, and Harry. 

Petyr and Ramsay. 

Dany and Cersei. 

 

Until the Night’s King.

 

Until Sansa woke up, sick of being scared, and realized she could be her father’s daughter too.

 

Sansa wrote for the crime beat, now. And Sansa was very, very good at what she did. 

 

So it was easy for her, almost laughably easy, to trawl all the new Ghost fanblogs and tracking pages that had cropped in the last few weeks for usable intel, to make a list of known and possible victims, to nip over to Dad’s office and make a detour to the evidence lockers, sneak a look at a couple of those tan envelopes after a late dinner with Mum. She built a profile on the Ghost that would make the fanboards wet themselves - his weapons, his skill set, his preferred flavour of victim. The places he frequented. The place he might be tomorrow night.

 

Where she could find him. Meet him.

_Talk_ to him. 

 

All it took was a broadband connection, some legwork, and a little patience - she had to wheedle information from her contacts on the street, the old detectives in Homicide who had a soft spot for Ned’s kid, late evenings in the office spent brainstorming with Margaery, trying not to ogle Jon Snow’s frankly amazing butt when he changed the toner on the copy machine, and got them coffees with a quiet, shy smile, suffering through Margaery’s blatant sexual harassment with a high, red blush. 

 

(He was just so. So _well-mannered,_ was the thing, like he’d been raised by a English butler instead of in an orphanage in a little farming village like Molestown. He would’ve made Mum _cry,_ if Catelyn Stark ever met Jon Snow. 

 

So gentle, and kind, and _courteous,_ and Sansa had met her fair share of tall, dark and handsome in her time, even dated a handful of them when she was younger, but Jon Snow had this way of _looking_ at her, when she chucked a balled-up classifieds sheet at his head over the cubicle wall they shared, and demanded he help her brainstorm for new angles on the Ghost sightings and the implications of vigilantism on the justice system. 

 

He _looked_ at her, steady and deep, like he'd hit mute on the whole world for Sansa, and it was-

 

It was a _lot,_ alright? It made Sansa feel a little bit like she was drowning, and then, _then-_  

 

Jon would crinkle a little smile and say something dry and incredibly rude about utilitarianism, and the two of them would snap into place like puzzle pieces, like magnets, north to south, locked in furious debate, picking the words from each others’ mouths, so in sync it felt like _flying_.)

 

By the time March rolled around, Sansa’s plan was in place. The Ghost would be at the docks tonight, she’s pretty sure, and so would she, Sansa’s decided, until-

 

Until.

 

“And Sansa,” Olenna Tyrell, editor-in-chief and Dictator Supreme, snapped, “I need you at the Loraq charity ball. They’re trying to fix cancer, or AIDS, or, I don’t know, recidivism rates in Crasters Alley, by throwing money at it, god bless ‘em all.”

 

Sansa thought that was pretty- well, rich, coming from her. Olenna Tyrell was a millionaire, not that she let that ever get in her way.

 

“The charity balls are Margaery’s area,” she pointed out. Sansa _hated_ high society parties - she always ran into someone who wanted her dead. It was very uncomfortable.

 

“Margaery’s got the flu, and you’re the only one pretty enough to blend in.”

 

Sansa scowled. “ _Snow’s_ pretty enough,” she pointed out, very bland and sarcastic. Her heart was doing fifty in a thirty-five zone, she was _desperate,_ she didn’t, didn’t, _**didn’t**_ want to go to one of Hizdahr zo Loraq’s parties; his wife _hated_ Sansa.

 

“Good,” Olenna barked. “Take him with you. Are we done?” It was rhetorical. Nobody asnwered, and Olenna nodded to herself. “We’re done.”

 

Jon protested weakly, once, and subsided when Olenna shot him a glare. Poor guy. He was really, pretty crap at confrontation.

 

“So. Molestown.” Sansa smiled at him, bracingly. “You got a tux?”

 

Jon smiled back, looking sort of ashen. Like he was going to relieve himself of his lunch on her brand new Ferragamos. Sansa took a hasty step back.

* * *

 

  1. in which jon shows off more than he should, because it’s sansa and he’s _weak_ #bless




 

Sansa held up the two evening gowns she still had from her belle-of-the-ball days, frowning at the full-length mirror, cellphone firmly clamped between her ear and her hitched shoulder.

 

“I’ll pick you up at six?” Snow offered hesitantly over the line. His voice was muffled, barely audible over the background roar, like he was standing under a subway track, or somewhere high-up. Windy. 

 

Sansa snorted, and held up the midnight-blue Marchesa. Soft, pleated chiffon, high-neck, open back. It really _was_ nice. “On that crotch-rocket you call a bike? I don’t _think_ so, Molestown. Not when I’m wearing a pretty dress.”

 

Jon stuttered a little over his words, before clearing his throat. Sansa could practically  _see_ his blush. “Um. I have. I have another ride actually. A car. So.”

 

“Oh. Yeah, cool.” Maybe she’d be able to make the docks, after all? If she got the quotes she needed from the party quick enough?

 

The other dress, the Roberto Cavalli, was a floor-length velvet, in deep, bloody carmine red. The bodice was mostly straps that covered more than they seemed to, and the skirts had an old English Regency flavour to their fullness and fall. 

 

It was a nice dress. And it _always_ made people talk. 

Sansa caught her own grin in the mirror, sharp and hungry, sharksome with teeth. Olenna would be proud.

* * *

 

Jon buzzed her when he reached, and Sansa slipped on a heavy faux fur coat before she went downstairs, and-

 

“Holy shit, Molestown, you clean up _nice.”_

That was an understatement. 

 

Snow looked like the next James bloody Bond, in a perfectly fitted tux, leaning against the passenger side seat of a cherry red, vintage Aston Martin, arms crossed over a broad chest, the seams of the suit draping over bulging biceps, broad shoulders, the white of the collar highlighting the line of his jaw, the crisp lines of the tux highlighting impossibly narrow hips, and he- he probably had _abs_ under there, the bastard, _this_ was what he’d been hiding under those godawful flannels he wore to work? 

 

Jesus. 

Jesus Christ.

 

Sansa was having- an aneurysm, a neural short circuit, a sexual _meltdown_ on the scale of Chernobyl, _something,_ so she said, “That's a nice ride,” gesturing at the car, and then, because she had _no filter,_ “Jon Snow, are you _rich?”_

Snow blushed and opened the door for her. Of course he did. Sansa slid in, caressing the butter-soft leather upholstery with a pleased hum. “One nice car doesn’t make me _rich,”_ he mumbled, and on any other day, Sansa might’ve noticed how that wasn’t really any kind of answer, but the tux, and the smile, and the _car_ were all kinda killing her, so she sank in a little deeper, and slanted an amused smile at Jon Snow.

 

He pinked up again, and revved the engine, going zero to sixty in six seconds flat. Sansa gasped a breathless laugh, and fumbled with her seatbelt, clicking it in place. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jon smirk, and it did desperate, tragic things to her insides, making her press her legs together, and swallow a very embarrassing sound.

 

Show-off. It was always the quiet ones, wasn’t it?

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

  1. in which there’s minor eye-fucking, and no actual fucking and sansa discovers a brand new leather fetish



 

The party was awful.

 

Daenerys zo Loraq was giving Sansa the stink-eye from across the ballroom. Sansa, in turn, made sure she was surrounded by human shielding and kept a close eye on her champagne flute.

 

It was past midnight when she had all the quotes she needed, and the party was just getting in swing. She swept the room for Jon, but he was gone, lost in the crush.  _Dammit_.

 

Someone jostled her, obviously drunk, and Sansa felt something wet and sticky smear across her side, where the straps left her bare-skinned. (That wasn’t saying much though; the straps left  _most_  of her bare-skinned.

Jon’s  _look_ , though, when she’d taken off the coat… Yeah, she decided, watching the bob of his throat when he swallowed, when his gaze slipped down like he couldn’t help himself one quick guilty glance, the way his hand pressed into the naked skin at the small of her back, hesitant, and then hot and firm… Oh yeah. Definitely worth it.)

 

She twisted to the side now, though, glaring, but whoever it was had disappeared into the steadily spiralling crowd.  _Godfuckdammit._  Was that- she poked at her side -  _chocolate?_  What the fuck. What the-  _Ugh_. 

 

Irritated, she made her way through the crowd to an off-shoot from the ballroom, into the nearest corridor. There were couples here, taking advantage of the dark. Sansa tracked their faces without quite moving her eyes, making note of them all. Funny, when it came in handy, knowing Congressman So-and-So was fucking Mr. or Mrs. Such-and-Such.

 

The first bathroom had a line for  _ages_ , but Sansa ignored it, and walked deeper into the house. She’d been here before, luckily, with Margaery and Jon - the zo Loraqs were religious fundraisers, even if the funds they raised didn't seem to ever help... anyone, really. Still, she knew the layout, there was a guest bath just past the music room, wasn’t there? Aha. Deserted.

 

Sansa grinned, and entered, flicking on a light and assessing the damage.

She had to twist a little, but it wasn’t too bad, actually. It hadn't gotten on the dress at all. All she needed was a couple Kleenex, and- she peered a little closer at the mirror. The lights flickered, and Sansa frowned. They flickered again. There were a series of sharp  _pop!_ s, and the lights went out, leaving behind the smoky, acrid smell of carbide in the air and barely any visible light. Sansa rapidly moved to the door, her instincts screaming danger, and choked back a cry when she heard the door click shut, heard the thump of a pair of footsteps advancing on her.

 

“Miss Stark,” said the intruder, low, gravelly, a nicotine rasp to the words.

 

Sansa didn’t trust her voice, didn’t trust herself to speak without stammering, so she didn’t speak at all, and let her silence do the talking.

 

“I hear you’ve been looking for me.” The voice was closer now, and Sansa’s pupils were slowly expanding, gathering light, making out grey shadows where there had once only been darkness.

 

 _It’s him,_  a little chant was whispering in her head,  _it’s him it’s him it’s him._

 

“It’s you,” Sansa said numbly, too shocked to be afraid now. He was standing right in front of her. Sansa could feel the heat of him, exuding outwards like a space heater, prickling her skin with warmth. He did wear a mask, a cowl really, and a dark cape rippled over his shoulders, flowing and liquid, so dark it felt like looking into an absence, a void, like reality had been peeled backwards to reveal... nothingness. “You’re the Ghost.”

 

He laughed silently, the breath whispering over her skin, making him suddenly, tangibly real,  _here._  It anchored her in the moment, made her want to reach out, touch the dark, cool armor he wore, the line of his jaw. She could see the full softness of his lips, the wry curl to them, the dark grain of his stubble. He smelt like hot metal and leather and smoke, and Sansa wanted to know how he would  _taste._

 

“Miss Stark, didn’t your parents ever tell you?” He stepped a little closer, wound a lock of bright red hair around a leather-gloved finger. He was close now, tight against the high swell of her breasts, and he tugged her closer still with nothing more a suggestion of strength. Sansa stumbled into him, pressed her hands against that unyielding black. She could feel his lips move against the soft shell of her ear as he whispered, “There’s no such thing as _Ghosts_."

* * *

 

5\. in which sansa is a cheerfully shameless stalker, and jon is a gothbaby with an overdeveloped flair for drama 


 

Sansa recovered.

 

She was a journalist, for god’s sake. She was good on her feet. “I want an interview.”

 

Ghost smiled at her again, unmoved. His other hand, rested lightly, almost respectfully on the bare skin of her waist, steadying and firm. “No, Miss Stark.”

 

“Sansa,” she corrected, “and this is as much for you as it is for me.”

 

“Is that right?” His voice was still a soft, pleasant rasp, eliminating all traces of his actual voice, making reognition impossible.

 

“Yes.” It was like being in debate club again, like high school. She had a case, and it was solid. All facts. She’d gone over it with Margaery enough times to be confident. “The police are attributing kills to you that aren’t yours, kids and sex workers and soup-kitchen volunteers. Civilians. Inter-gang violence. Whatever. Everytime they can’t find a perp, the cops figure out a way to pin it on you, so they can keep looking good, and keep funding-"

 

"The anti-vigilante task force, I know." He grinned, lethal, baring his teeth like an animal. "They aren't anywhere close, Miss Stark. I'm not worried."

 

He had access. Shit. _Shit_. He had access to the task force's case files? Shit. Was he a cop? Was _Dad_ in danger? _Mom?_ Oh god, oh god, what had she **_done,_** _what had she-_

 

Sansa sucked in a breath, and forced herself to continue. "The last six weeks, it’s gotten out that you like knives. Assaults with bladed weapons have actually gone up in Craster's Alley, and that’s- that’s only the epicentre. That's on you." She paused. "Look, I can give you a voice. Help you clear the air.”

 

“How do you know I didn’t kill them?” That silken softness had evaporated from his voice. He was real now, honest, jagged edges and bleeding words. “How do you know I didn’t kill all of them, Miss Stark? The police don’t. Maybe I did it. Maybe I  _liked_  doing it. Have you considered that? Maybe I  _like_  hurtin’ them, maybe I like makin’ them beg, makin’ them cry at my feet, maybe I  _like_  it, maybe I get off on it.” 

 

The hand on her waist was tighter now, painful, a vise-grip made of iron, and Sansa was pressed to him, almost helpless, teetering on high heels, feeling the breath of his words against her lips. “Maybe,” he whispered, in a rich, chocolate-dark curl, “maybe you’re in trouble, Little Red. Maybe you’re in danger. Maybe you’ve gotten yourself locked with a wolf. Maybe I’m hungry, sweetheart, and maybe you’re lookin’ damn good.”

 

Sansa’s hands balled into fists, but she did not push him away. “You’re a killer,” she said flatly, “but you’re not a murderer. You have a code, and you stick to it. I’ve never hurt  _anyone_ , not the way I’d need to, for you to come after me. I’m safe with you.”

 

“You stupid, goddamn  _airhead,”_ he hissed, and his other hand clamped around her wrists in a single furious move, imprisoning them against his hard chest. She couldn't feel his heartbeat. Kevlar. Body armor. “You think a  _code_  will keep you safe? You think some  _code_  will keep you  _alive? In_   _this_   _city?!_ You’re going to get yourself  _killed,_  you reckless, bloody  _idiot.”_

 

“Maybe,” Sansa agrees placidly. “But I’m safe with you.”

 

Ghost swore harshly under his breath, and with a violent jerk, he pushed away from her, cape swirling and whipping around his ankles as he turned, stalking back to the door.

 

“I want that interview, Ghost! I’ll be at the docks, tomorrow. Midnight.”

 

“I won’t be there,” came the answering growl, before the door slammed shut behind him. 

 

Sansa stood where she was, rooted. It took long moments for the adrenaline to catch up, and then she sank boneless, to the floor, dizzy and pumped and exhausted all at once. It took a while for her smile to bubble up, but when it did, there was no tamping it down. 

 

He’d be there.

She knew he would.

 

He was like her, just like her, and he wouldn’t be able to help himself.

* * *

 

 

  1. in which jon and sansa compete for blue ribbon at the bad decision fair (hint: it’s a tie. they're both morons.)




Sansa made her way back to the ballroom slowly, weaving through the dark, shadowy corridors, lost in her own head. 

 

“Sansa?” The voice seemed to come from far, far away, and Sansa didn’t even realize someone was speaking to her, until she’d walked smack-dab into a broad chest.

 

_Ghost?_

 

She blinked, once, twice.

“Jon?”

He was peering down at her, concern softening his features, eyebrows swooping down in an expression of alarm. His hands ran down her arms in an almost unconscious gesture, as if he was checking for injury. He’d been in the army, she remembered fuzzily. The heat of his palms sank deep into her skin, warming her up, and Sansa shivered.

 

She was cold. So cold.

 

Her hands clutched at the lapels of his tux in an involuntary gesture, knees wobbling precariously. 

 

Adrenaline high. She was coming off an _adrenaline high,_ just from being _near_ the Ghost.

 

“Are you okay?” he asked, soft, hushed, the syllables washing over her like something warm, soft. Molten with heat.

 

Sansa laughed shakily, and Jon wrapped a heavy arm around her waist, gathering her into his side, where he was wonderfully solid. “Nope,” he muttered to himself. “You’re not okay. Let’s- Let’s get you somewhere quiet- Here.”

 

He opened a door and walked them both inside, kicking it closed. A broom closet, some small rational part of Sansa noted, as he turned her to face him again. Sansa went willingly, like a marionette with no strings, and Jon ran his hands over her again, peering into her eyes and taking her pulse, smelling dark and rich and like all kinds of good things, turning the air around them hot, hot, _hot._ Sansa felt the smile curl her lips in a lazy, slow thing, full of want, and there was a lovely, luscious throb in the pit of her stomach, unfurling, and she couldn’t tell whether it was the Ghost who'd done this to her, or Jon, she didn’t-

didn’t _want_ to know-

Not when it was so easy to curve her hands around that perfect, hard jawline, to tip her face back, to drag him down, to kiss and kiss and kiss, slow, unhurried, lips brushing lips, dry and soft-

 

“Sansa,” he whispered against her mouth, “Sansa, wait, what-“

 

But she didn’t _want_ to talk, couldn’t he tell? They were always in sync, always, she knew him like the back of her hand, and how couldn’t he _tell?_ So she made a sound, an angry, broken slur of a sound from the back of her throat, and tightened her grip and _kissed_ him, like she _meant_ it, dragging his bottom lip into her mouth, biting until it _hurt_ , soothing it away with a brush of her tongue, until his arm locked around her, pulled her hard against him.

 

Until he kissed _back._

 

Sansa had been wrong. This.  _This_ was like flying.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

  1. porn! :D 



The broom closet is lit by a solitary, weak bulb, recessed into a side wall, golden and dim, but its enough. Enough to see Jon, his lips red, a little swollen, bow tie and three buttons undone, jacket shucked off in a dark puddle on the ground, panting as he tries to catch his breath, his eyes dark and lidded, big, calloused hands dragging against her skin. The straps of the bodice are tricky bastards, all the clasps cleverly hidden, and Jon works at them with a maddening lack of speed, letting Sansa rock against the hard, muscular bulge of his thigh, scalp flushed with sweat, eyes screwed shut as another pulse of wetness seeps out between her legs.

“That’s it,” she hears him croon, finally, finally, undoing the right clasp, baring the full, round curve of a breast to the air. “Keep ridin’, sweetheart, just like that.” 

He palms her idly, gently, the other hand dropping low, cupping her arse, helping her set a slow, dirty rhythm, but even that’s steady, and unhurried, like he does this all the time, fuck in broom closets with no locks, like he’s got all the time in the world to spare.

“Jon,” she hisses, nails digging into the back of his neck, and he doesn’t even _flinch_. “Goddammit, I need-“

“What do you need?” His voice is close now, but still soft, gentle, pleasant almost, like he’s asking her her sandwich order, instead of gently flicking her nipple with the blunt edge of a nail, whisepring hotly against the side of her neck. “Tell me what you need, Sansa, and I’ll give it to you. Just tell me.”

Something like anger sparks up her spine. So he wants her to beg. That’s the game, is it? She can play that game.

“I want you to _fuck me_ ,” she hisses, and Jon goes gratifyingly still. “I want you take off that stupid bloody shirt, I want you to get down on your knees, I want your- _mouth-“_

 _“Where?”_ he whispered, but his hand was digging into the lush curve of her arse with an almost careless sort of cruelty, like it wasn’t even registering, _god,_ he was _strong._ He could probably just pick her up now, pick her up, let her wrap her legs around that incredibly narrow waist, and fuck her against this wall-

She dragged the hand cupping her breast down, past the skirts wadded up around her hips, against his thigh, where she was so desperately wet, her thong had turned into a soppy, wadded up mess. “Here,” she whispered, shaky, his fingers grazing her cunt, and saw his eyes squeeze shut, watched him swallow and struggle for control. “I want you _here._ ”

 _“Jesus,”_ he swore, in a sharp exhalation, and he dropped his forehead agaisnt hers in a way that spelt defeat. “Jesus Christ, sweetheart,” with a shaky laugh, and then he was kissing her again, those meltingly soft kisses from before, sipping at her mouth like a rare, fine vintage, and his hands were lifting her off her feet. He hummed happily when she wrapped her thighs around his waist, like that was a _hardship,_ like that wasn’t _exactly_ what she’d wanted, and groaned, low, shockingly hoarse, when she rocked her cunt against the bulge in his pants. 

She raked her hands through the dense, clipped layers of his hair, throwing her shoulders back for leverage, her spine coming off the wall in a long arch, _grinding._ “Take it _off_ , come on, come _on_ ,” she was saying, words dripping off her tongue, caught behind moans she couldn’t quite hold back. Jon did some complicated balancing act, shoving her higher up, and holding her off, making her _whine_ , high and unfulfilled. 

And then he stopped.

“What- Why are you- _Jon.”_

 _“Protection,”_ he growled, a strain of dark, heavy anger scouring his voice. “Goddammit, I don’t- I don’t have anyth-“

“I’m clean,” she interrupted impatiently.

Jon blinked at her.

“I’m clean, I’m on birth control. Are you?”

“On _birth control?”_

“Are you _clean?”_ she snarled.

“Yes. Yes.”

“ _Good_. Jon,” her voice softened, weakened. “Please, I need- I need you  _now_ _,_ please, now, _now_ -“

"Sshh," he whispered, brushing their lips together, tangling his fingers through her hair, around the back of her neck. He fit a hand between them, gripping the base of his cock, guiding the blunt head against her throbbing clit, against the aching hollow of her cunt, and then he was sinking into her, filling her up, in a slow, gorgeous slide. She was wet, desperately so almost, but there was something about the angle, something about _Jon_ , that felt too big, too much, she could feel him in her _throat,_ she could feel him with every breath, like she’d been cleaved open from the inside out, too soon, too sudden-

“Sansa?” Jon was saying, and she could feel the tremble rocket through his spine, his thighs, his hands. “Sansa?” that strain of concern shadowing his question, and she blinked away her-

Tears? Where did that come from?

“Just,” she whispered, the word ragged, low, nothing like her own voice. “Go slow,” she rasped. “Go slow, okay? Just for a bit.”

“Okay,” he said, and his lips brushed the corner of her eye, once, and again. When he kissed her after, he tasted like salt. “Okay.” Something shifted about him, some deep and unknowable thing, and it punched a sound out of her, sharp and quick. Jon locked his mouth over hers, swallowing it halfway through. He withdrew just a little, and rocked back in, setting a steady, deliberate rhythm, one arm around her waist, the other braced on the wall by her side. There was no way to maneuver here, not really, with her legs wrapped around his hips, her head and the tops of her shoulders digging into the wall, hands splayed flat, on his shoulder, on the wall behind. No way she could touch except to grip, no way to kiss, nothing except a precarious, knife-sharp balance, as Jon fucked her, slow, and hard, and deep, like a metronome.

“Harder,” she gasped, as the feeling in her gut wound tight. “I can take it, I can- _harder_ , Jon-“ and he obliged, with a low, rolling groan, sharp, abortive thrusts that made her screw her eyes closed, tears leaking out, the fullness making it hard to catch her breath.

“Are you,” Jon asked, in that low, shaken voice, that made her want- want to kiss him- want his skin against hers, naked, open- want _him-_ “Are you close?” Jon asked, and she could feel the tremors in his arms, hear the tightness of his voice.

“Yes,” she hissed, “yes, yes, god, Jon, _yes-“_ and Jon did something dizzying and complicated, that made Sansa slip and cry out in shock, before she was slammed harder against the wall, each thrust dragging against her throbbing, neglected clit, and Sansa was making little, mindless sounds every time he fucked into her, plaint, wound-up like a toy, mindless with pleasure, gone, _gone._

“Now,” he whispered, into the curve of her neck, hips pistoning, relentless, inhuman, a _machine,_ “Come for me, _now,_ ” and the feeling gathered, and crescendoed, and detonated into sparks, a wave of agonizing pleasure. And then, silence.

* * *

  1. sansa would like a hole to curl up and die in, now, thanks.


  1. or, in which the universe is remarkably unhelpful, and ned stark makes a brief, uncredited appearance



Jon handled clean-up, donating a pocket square to the cause - Sansa was only grateful that it wasn’t real silk, even if it felt like it. Seriously, it was a good thing she’d been to Jon’s ratty-ass apartment with the rest of the bullpen, because the whole slick, sexy bachelor who fucked like a pornstar thing he had going was doing a serious number on her.

Jon was doing a pretty good impression of being an elite one-percenter. And that wasn’t Sansa’s type at all.

Well.

Not these days. Not anymore.

In fact, they didn't say anything at all, to each other, not when Sansa smoothed her dress out, and twisted her hair back into a messy half-chignon. Not when Jon pulled his jacket back on, not bothering with redoing the bowtie- or the buttons. Sansa didn’t blame him; his hair was that just-fucked bedhead men paid hard money to imitate, his lips were dark from kissing, and there was a sheen of perspiration that made him practically glow in the dim light. 

From where Sansa stood, the view was… very, very nice.

The path from the broom closet, to the coatroom, to the valet and into that unbelievable car, was so sunk in quiet that by the time Sansa had put her seatbelt on, she felt like she could scream from it, the beginnings of a headache starting to pound every time she closed her eyes.

“We don’t,” Jon began, and then cut off. The engine was idling, the top was down, the night air was cool all around them. “We don’t need to talk about it,” he started again, hands tight around the steering wheel, and Sansa would swear up and down until the end of the time she could actually hear the leather creak under his hands. “But-“

Sansa snorts. ' _Everything before the word but.'_

“What?”

“Everything before the word but is horseshit.”

His lips thinned out, like he was mad at her, _Jesus,_ what. _What?_

“What?” she asked out loud.

“This. What- I mean.” He looked away, and tapped on the gas, drifting out of the driveway and into the dark, cedar-lined avenue of Wolfswood Ave. “What brought this on?”

 _Ghost,_ some horrid, gleeful part of her head supplied. _Ghost got me all revved up, and I used you to get me off._

Christ. Fuck. That’s not what happened, is it? 

_He was gone, and you were convenient, and Margaery always says you're into me- You were there. So I used you._

No. No. That- That was _Cersei’s_ shtick, and Petyr’s. Ramsay’s.

That’s not-

That’s not what _Sansa_ did. That was not who she was.

It _wasn’t._

“Sansa?”

She was so lost in her own head that Jon’s voice made her jump. When she looked around, she realized they’d stopped. They’d reached her place. _When did they get here? How long has she been quiet?_

She heard the click of Jon unlatching his seat belt, getting out of the car. He walked around the hood, opened her door, because of course Jon Snow opened doors, even when she’d been- a piece of shit, an absolute bastard. 

Bastardette. 

Whatever. 

There was a grim smile lurking around the shape of her eyes. 

Mary, Mother of God, but Olenna would be _proud_.

“I don’t want to- I’d rather.” Sansa stepped out of the car, past Jon and onto the porch of her two-storey walk-up. It wasn't not the best part of town, but she was a part of a dying industry. Journos had to eat too. She turned around to face him, dark curls all messed up from the wind and from her hands, that dark, unyielding look of his that made her heart trip like it was on a bad acid trip, god, fuck, _fuck_. 

“I’d rather no one at work found out about-“ _us,_ “-this.”

Jon’s expression didn't so much as flicker. It was the same it’d always been - quiet, patient, thoughtful. 

A _mask_ , a perfect poker face. He could break the bank at Vegas with that bloody face, and Sansa couldn't _believe_ she'd ever thought it _meant_ something.

“I’ve been north of the Wall,” he said quietly. Reproachful. _'How dare you insult my honour'_. "I’ve been in lock-up protecting sources. I know how to keep my mouth shut, Sansa.”

He slid down the benchseat into the driver’s seat, and with a roar of a V6 engine, pulled ‘round the bend and into the dark night. He never looked back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm _sorry_.


	4. Chapter 4

  1. in which sansa realizes being the stalker is lot more fun than being stalked. ain’t karma a bitch?



By the time 3am rolled around, Sansa gave up trying to fall asleep, and put on some water for tea. Stupid, stupid, so  _goddamn_ stupid, this whole bloody  _mess..._ Why couldn't she just- keep her pants on. For fuck's sake. 

The kettle’s whistle knocked her out of her headspace, and she poured a cup of lemon verbena, while the laptop booted up noisily. The Ghost files were a password-protected folder on her desktop, and Sansa pulled it up from sheer muscle memory. The folder had became her mecca these past weeks, her personal site of pilgrimage, each nugget of data carefully shined, and shaped, and slotted into postion. She could recite it in her sleep.

Obsession was a dirty word, alright? Besides, there was a new sherriff in town. Sansa was paid to ~~fantasize~~  think about him.

And he _knew_ her.

He knew _Sansa’s name._

He knew, somehow, that she was looking into him, which- hell. Everyone and their mother was looking into the Ghost in this town. But he’d deigned to _speak_ to her, and that was- that had to be something? Right?

It meant he had contacts.

Somewhere, someone she’d spoken to, had spoken to the Ghost too. One of the working girls from Barrowton? From Club Eyrie? From the police force?

Someone who’d seen this city at its worst. Who didn’t mind a vigilante cleaning up the streets. Christ, she hoped it wasn’t a cop. That’d _wreck_ Dad.

In a browser window, she pulled the _Daily Planet_ ’s cloud storage platform. There was a backup of the Ghost folder here, which only she could access, and copies of her ongoing articles, which was open to most upper-level staff members at the _Planet_. Margaery had been been rifling through her stuff, leaving snippy, brutal comments throughout her last piece for the local politics page, a profile on one of the new mayoral candidates for Wintertown - _‘Grandmother didn’t tell me you were transferring to the op-eds, Stark.’_

_Ouch._

Sansa typed in, _‘Prick me, do I not bleed?’_ on their private chat, and left it at that. Margaery was right, after all - the article was horrifically biased.

Ghost had had Sansa off her game for a while now, and she could only be pathetically grateful he’d never see what was basically- well. An online scrapbook, devoted to him.

Hang the fuck on.

Hang-

Oh god.

_**The backup file.** _

The backup file was on the **_cloud_**. The _Daily Planet_ wasn't high-tech, they rented bandwidth from Amazon Web Services like all the other peasants, there was no platinum-encased double-redundancy mainframe in the basement of Targaryen Tower where their offices were located - this wasn’t a bad Mission Impossible reboot. Anyone with a decent coding background and enough motivation could figure out how to access Sansa’s stupid, bloody ‘private’ folder, could rip through the firewall like it was made of wet paper.

And, god, Sansa’s written about the NSA in the past. She's been smart enough to go Luddite everytime she did a cybercrime exposé, to keep everything on paper, to type the drafts up on an airgapped laptop they keep at the Planet for _exactly_ this reason.

_She knew better._

This…

 _Misstep_ was a bad word for it. _Catastrophe_ came somewhat closer.

Her hands shook while she scrolled through the data. He hadn’t altered it, hadn’t left a digital footprint in the view history, nothing. It was possible, marginally, that he hadn’t seen this.

Sansa laughed to herself.

_No it wasn’t._

First thing Dad had taught her when he found out she was going to covering the worst parts of the city - _’In this job, you’re not allowed to believe in coincidences.'_

She scrolled to the bottom, and, with fingers that trembled like an old woman's, she typed.

_‘I’ll be at the corner of Belgrave and 51st, tomorrow, at midnight. Not the docks. Meet me, or this folder goes public.'_

There.

Her heart was pounding erratically, but there was a helpless, wild-eyed grin curving her lips as Sansa sat back. Sipped her tea, slowly, until the dregs at the bottom had gone icy cold. 

The gauntlet had been tossed.  
It was his turn now.

* * *

  1. in which everyone has terrible timing (thanks for nothing, mar)



Friday morning saw Sansa spending an hour at bond court, before jetting off to Podrick Payne’s town hall rally, badgering Beth Cassel into ~~nicking~~ _commandeering_ about ten thousand dollars worth of equipment from photo. They split an onion bagel lunch on the way to the docks, where Beth had to crouch, unmoving, on top of a six-stack of freight containers until she could snap a series of photos documenting Lancel Lannister shaking hands with pretty much all the top dogs in the High Sparrow betting circuits, the sun setting on the far horizon. There went _his_ mayoral ambitions, the snot-nosed sucker.

Sansa and Beth made it to the bullpen on the 24th floor of Targaryen Tower just in time to stick completed articles at the copydesk and bully the interns into coffees and croissants, while gleefully butchering their human interest stories for the metro pages.

“You look chipper.” Margaery had her chin over Sansa’s cubicle, looking thoughtful and pretty and far too good for a dump like the _Planet._

“It’s been a good day.”

Margaery arched an eyebrow. “The weather forecast’s for _sleet_ , we’ve lost another advertiser, and- oh, have you noticed? The industry’s _dying._ "

Sansa grinned. “Any day a Lannister goes down is a good day in my book.”

Her brown eyes went wide. “My god. Not _Kevan?”_

“His turn will come. For now,” Sansa tossed the newly developed photos on her desk, still a little warm from the printer, “His precious son. Lancel.”

There was an appreciative hum, before Margaery’s keen eyes flicked back to her face. “That’s not it. What aren’t you telling me?”

Jesus. The woman was a goddamn psychic. Sansa shrugged, crinkled her brow, smiled just enough to seem blasé. “Nothing. Why?”

But Margaery’d caught the scent now. No way she was letting go. “You never did say - how’d the party go last night?”

“Yeah, about that - aren’t you supposed to have the flu?”

“I’m better now.” Margaery narrowed her eyes. “How was the party, Sansa?”

“Fine.” Sansa swallowed, and pasted on a smile. “It was fine. Easy in, easy out.”

“Wow. That bad, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“Okay. Hey, you look nice?”

“Thanks?”

“Planning to get laid?”

“What the _fuck_ , Mar.”

“I’m just saying - you’re wearing the boots.”

Sansa glanced down at her feet. They were _nice_ boots. A faux leather that wrapped tightly around her calves, square, stacked heels, a sole made of clouds and hugs, so comfortable she could _sprint_ in them. _And_ they did great things for her legs. Really, what more could you ask for?

“What’s wrong with my boots?”

“They’re the fuck-me boots.”

“Are not!” Sansa exclaimed, coloring a bright, splotchy pink that clashed horribly with her hair.

“Are _too_ , loser,” Margaery countered intelligently, because they were both highly educated, highly qualified professionals who _wrote_ for a living. “Got a hot date, huh?”

Sansa thought about Ghost, with his quiet, angry eyes, and all the blood he’d spilled, and the way he’d made her feel, sick and anxious and breathless and _high._ She laughed, wrecked, a little broken, scrubbing a hand over her eyes, guilt pooling uneasily in her stomach. “Sure. Yeah,” she mumbled weakly. “Something like that.”

“ _What._ “

She looked up. Past Margaery, over her shoulder. The little doorway to the bullpen, propped open with a filebox from Archives. The buzzing tubelight, that blipped on and off every few seconds, like they were on a bad horror movie’s soundstage.

She looked at _Jon_.

The mask he’d worn last night had cracked now, fractured right down the center. His dark eyes were wide, shocked, his throat moving sharply as he swallowed air. There were high points of color in his cheeks, unhealthy against the pale, ashen color of his skin. He looked like he’d been punched in the gut, cleaved open, bleeding soundlessly as he stood in front of her.

“ _Jon_ ,” she started to say, getting up out of her chair, stumbling forward, _fuck_ these stupid boots, but he was already walking away, a long-legged stride that was just this side of an outright run.

She caught herself at the doorway, watched him sweep past the elevator bay, bang open the door to the stairwell, and disappear into the darkness.

Sansa had never hated herself more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘Prick me, do I not bleed?’ is adapted from this line by Shylock in Merchant of Venice:   
>  'I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? _**If you prick us, do we not bleed?**_ If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’
> 
> 'You're not allowed to believe in coincidences,' is adapted from a quote in Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, spoken by Commissioner Jim Gordon to a young detective on the force, heavily implied to be a version of Nightwing, the Nolanverse's first Robin - _**'You're a detective now, son. You're not allowed to believe in coincidence anymore.**_


	5. Chapter 5

  1. in which sansa and jon try very hard not to flirt and boy oh boy, do they SUCK at not-flirting or WHAT



 

Dinner consisted of a soggy Philly cheesesteak sub, washed down with a half litre of battery acid coffee at a diner off the red light zone in Barrowton. It was going 11 by the time she made her down to 51st, checking in with Mya Stone and her ‘hostesses’ at Club Eyrie, with Sister Jeyne at the Lady of Perpetual Grace, with the Merryweather girls who ran the homeless shelter on Rose Road. 

 

Friends, allies, informants. 

The lines were all blurred these days.

 

The brownstone at the corner of the intersection was a four-storey walk-up. Sansa took the back alley and trudged up the fire escape, like she always had, from the time she and Robb discovered the view when they were kids. It was a long, tiring climb, in the early March cold - she hadn’t sleep more than four hours in the last two days - but it was worth it. 

 

She walked to the edge, rested her chin on top of a stone gargoyle - a crouched lion, roaring out onto the streets below.

 

The corner of Barrowton and 51st was a seam that ran for miles either way, a dark line that cut the city in half. To the south-east was Wintertown - neo-gothic architecture of a bygone century, neighbourhoods gone to seed, the lonely flicker of a bad streetlight in the dark distance. To the north-west was downtown Winterfell - it's literal diametric opposite - a jagged skyline of glass and polished steel, brimming with promise and hope, a confluence point of technology, culture and  _wealth._

 

“ _'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.'_ ” 

 

Sansa jolted in her place, and forced herself not to turn too fast. Ghost continued, soft, his voice coming from several feet behind her, growing no louder. No closer. 

 

“ _‘It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness-_ '”

 

“ _'-it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.'_ ” Sansa turned, finally. Her eyes went up, up, and widened when she saw his perch, some twelve feet off the roof, at the edge of the building’s water tank, one hand wrapped around a metal girder, perfectly comfortable. _Show-off._ “A Tale of Two Cities. Appropriate, but I’m not your high school English teacher, Ghost - you don’t need to impress me with Dickens.”

 

“No,” he agreed calmly. “Murder was enough to impress you.”

 

Sansa gritted her teeth. _Bastard._ “Do you mind getting down? My neck hurts.”

 

“Sucks for you,” he retorted, like a _child._ Sansa bit back a smile. Not much older than her, then.

 

“You sound different. Voice modulator?”

 

Ghost nodded, and then vaulted down from the tank, his cape flaring around his shoulders, and… reducing his impact? What the hell kind of tech did this guy _have?!_

 

“In case you’re recording this conversation.”

 

Sansa pulled out her recorder from an inner jacket pocket. “I am.”

 

She couldn’t see him, but she was pretty sure he rolled his eyes. She allowed herself a little smile, before chewing on her bottom lip long enough to make the urge go away. His attention seemed to sharpen then, and Sansa felt tight all over, prickly and electric.

 

“You wanted me here,” he snapped, finally, irritated. "I’m here. _Talk._ ”

 

“I’m sorry, I lied - I’m going to publish the folder. But, if you cooperate, if you give me an exclusive, I’ll allow you first-look at the article, give you veto on anything too… sensitive. Is that fair?”

 

He scowled, black as night, and Sansa’s heartbeat accelerated despite herself. “You’re **_not_** going to press with the bloody folder, Stark.”

 

“Call me Sansa, please. I’m not?”

 

“No, _Stark.”_ Wow, he was an _infant._ “The folder’s been deleted.”

 

Sansa smiled pleasantly. “The one on the cloud? That’s alright. I have a backup.”

 

Ghost smiled right back, with a vicious edge, and advanced on her. “The one on your hard drive? That’s gone too.” He was in her personal space now, half a foot apart, looming, forbidding, his face caught in shadow. 

 

Behind her, there was a stone gargoyle and a sharp fall.

Cornered. Trapped. Nowhere to run.

 

Sansa reached out to him, with a deep and honest appreciation for how Androcles must have felt when they tossed him in the pit. She let her hand rest on his chest, the firm, rigid contours of it, cool and hard under her fingers. 

 

“Oh, did I misspeak? I have _backups._ As in, _plural._ ” She patted his - amazing, wonderful, _life-changing -_ pecs gently. “This ain’t my first rodeo, cowboy.”

 

He scowled harder. “What do you _want?_ ” 

 

Wow, _whining_ now. How did this guy scare _anyone?_

 

(It was the lurking. Definitely. All the lurking, and the sneaking up on people, and yelling ‘boo!’ in their ears, oh god, the Ghost was a little _shit.)_

 

“You’ve spent six months playing judge, jury and executioner. The police’s anti-vigilante taskforce doesn’t even have a _pencil sketch_ of you, the cameras all over the city seem to magically swing away to avoid you, the mafia is _celebrating_ because you’ve got the cops, the DAs, _everyone_ running scared _-_ and last night, Dad brought in a nineteen-year-old _kid,_ in a polyester cape and a- a friggin' _Zorro_ mask who had _stabbed his father to **death** -”_

 

“His name’s Chett Palmer,” Jon interrupted angrily. “I _know_. Did _you_ know, _Sansa,”_ and Sansa wished he hadn’t used her name now, _hated_ the way it sounded in his mouth, “that Chett’s dear old dad had been whalin’ on him since he was _six years old?_ Get that boy’s medical history, get his x-rays, his school absences, his high school counselor’s notes, and _tell_ me- _you_ tell me Frank Palmer **_deserved_** to live.”

 

“So that’s it, then? You keep killing. You keep playing Winterfell's one-man firing squad.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Till _when?_ When does this _stop?”_

 

“When _they_ do.”

 

“‘They’?”

 

“The Frank Palmers of this city.” His voice was dark and rich, heavy with conviction, so brutally honest Sansa could feel the ache of it in the back of her throat, in the corners of her eyes, in her _bones_. “The cruel and the corrupt, the ones who’re _poisoning **my** city,_ the ones who prey on the fearful and the weak. I’ll put down my sword the day they put down theirs.” 

 

Sansa laughed then, because if she didn’t she would- scream. Cry. “My dad, you know, he’s the police commissioner,” she started softly. Sansa could feel his eyes on her, but she hugged herself tightly, and pushed on, “He was there during the Rebellion, and the Iron revolts; and he got no thanks for it, not once. I asked him about it, after a bad case. I asked him, _why?_ Some people didn’t _deserve_ to live, I said. Some people _needed_ to be eradicated. Like a virus. A disease.”

 

“What did he say? _'Many that live deserve death, and some that die-'”_  

 

Sansa smiled a little, because it had been a while since a boy quoted Tolkien to her. She couldn’t be held accountable for her actions, _come on._  

 

“No. Shut up,” Sansa interrupted with a laugh, poking a finger at his chest, and it shouldn't have had any impact, but he stumbled anyway, and caught himself on the hind leg of the gargoyle behind Sansa, effectively plastering them together. 

 

It was funny, how they kept ending up this way.

Like lodestones. Magnets.

 

An irreversible law of attraction. 

 

“‘Hate begets hate,’ he said. ‘And violence begets violence. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.’”

 

The Ghost of Winterfell watched her curiously now, head slightly cocked to the side. He tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear - and it felt like he was maybe… maybe just finding excuses to touch her.

 

“Is that why you chose to become a reporter, Miss Stark?” And this felt like a return to familiar ground - his strange, severe formality, even when he was so close they were trading breaths, so close the warmth of him wrapped around her like a coccoon. “Because you ‘love’ this town? Is that why you put this city’s ugliness on public trial? Is that why you want force them, from the darkness into the light?”

 

Sansa smiled. “No. Don’t you see? I couldn’t be brave. I couldn’t forgive the bastards. I couldn’t trust the justice system, and I’m hiding in the dark too. I’m right where you are. And that’s okay. That’s _okay_. You can do good from here too, I know, because I try- I _try_ to, _everyday_ , and I don’t ever know if it even helps but-“

 

“You do,” he interrupted, the low, painfully honest note of his voice making her scalp prickle, making the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand. “You help, Miss Stark. I swear on it.”

 

“You can too. Don’t you see? You can do so much _good,_ if you only _tried-_ ” 

 

She feel her vision blur, felt the world fog over, like she was seeing everything through a lens, an occluded glass, what had happened? Did he _do something?_ Did he  _ **drug** her?!_  

 

His hand came up gently, cool leather-gloved fingers brushing just below her eyes, a curious slackness to his lips that made Sansa want- want to-

 

It was only when she felt something hot, wet trickle down her cheek that Sansa realized - she was _crying?!_

 

Her breath turned into a hitched sob, and she scrubbed furiously at her eyes, wiping the tears away with rushed, jerky motions, shivering from the cold, babbling, “I’m sorry, sorry, _god,_ this is so emb-”

 

She looked up.

He was gone.

 

And so was her recorder.

 

Sansa burst out laughing, shaky and exhausted, and sank down to her butt, knees tucked against her chest, staring at the tops of her fuck-me boots with a silly, amused grin. 

 

Oh, that _son of a bitch._

She didn’t even know why she _liked_ him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘It was the best of times,…’ is the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities:
> 
> _'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,_ we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.’
> 
>  
> 
> ‘Many that live deserve death…’ is from The Fellowship of the Ring:
> 
> ‘"I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death." "Deserves it! I daresay he does. _Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life._ Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”'
> 
>  
> 
> ‘Hate begets hate…’ is an amalgam of two quotes by Martin Luther King:
> 
> " _Hate begets hate; violence begets violence;_ toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love...Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding." — _Speech, 1958_
> 
> "Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. _Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that._ ” -  _‘Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community’_ Harper  & Row Publishers, 1967.


	6. Chapter 6

  1. it is important, at this point, to note that lois lane, a pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist for an internationally circulated newspaper, didn’t **_once_** think, ‘boy, that clark guy i’m **_engaged to*_** sure looks a lot like the alien superhero who keeps saving me from kidnappers/supervillains/murder-y space armadas from outer _space_ ' 



Sansa wrote, proofed and then re-wrote the article. Several times.

It took six tries and most of the night to get it perfect, and afterwards, she crashed  _hard._ It was why she was late to work the next day, why she didn't bother to even glance at a copy of the _Planet,_ didn't do anything except grab her stuff, pull on a jacket and go, go, _go._

It’s why she was confused at the roaring hubbub of the bullpen at 11 in the morning - Sansa stared dumbfounded at her colleagues running around, like headless chickens in a slaughterhouse.

“Jeez,” she mumbled mostly to herself, “who died.”

Jon looked at her blankly. “You’re late.” He slapped a copy of the paper in front of her, shoved a chipped, steaming mug of coffee in her direction and said, in that same expressionless tone, “Busy night?”

Sansa gritted her teeth and looked at the front page, instead of replying. 

 _ **HIZDAHR ZO LORAQ, 42, MURDERED AT MIDNIGHT**_  
_Daenerys zo Loraq announces Mayoral run in wake of husband’s death_  

_By_ **_Jon Snow  
_ ** _Correspondent_

“What the hell?” she whispered faintly.

“He was stabbed to death, behind the Eyrie. That men’s club in Wintertown?”

“I know the place.” 

Jon’s eyes were on her, she could feel it. He grunted. Continued, “Coroner puts time of death sometime _before_ midnight yesterday, actually. He stepped out into the alley behind the club to take a call. They're saying it was a stab wound to the chest. Serrated edge. The murderer slipped a knife between the ribs. They’re blaming-”

“-the Ghost,” Sansa whispered. “It’s his MO. But that’s not possible. He was-”  _With me._ Sansa choked the words back just in time. “Daenerys is **_running?!_** Isn’t the filing deadline long past?”

Jon was watching her. She could practically hear the gears grinding, could sense the moment he chose not to pester her about… the slip. 

On another day, she would’ve wondered why.

“There’s a loophole in the deadline,” Jon muttered. “She just needs to file a petition with a thousand signatures, and that’s something she can have ready before the courts close today. Varys Nancy just signed on as her campaign manager.”

Sansa breathed in a horrified gasp. “Oh _god_. She’s going to **_win_** _.”_

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

She looked up at him. “We need to stop her.”

“Sure, okay.” Jon shook his head, baffled. “ _How?_ ”

“We’ll figure it out.” _We._ Like that was a given. Like she hadn’t abused his trust _monumentally._ “I can count on you?”

 _Please,_ Sansa was thinking. Praying. _Please, please, I need this, I need my best guy with me on this. I can do this alone, but I don’t_ want  _to._

“Yes,” he said, quiet, intent, that old familiar look, and Sansa felt her ribs expand with a breath she didn’t know she’d held. “You can count on me, Sans. Always.”

* * *

  1. every good superhero story (not that this one’s particularly… good?) needs a long-lost evil twin. (or aunt. whatever. we’re making lemonade here.)



Sansa walked into Olenna’s office on coltish, unsteady feet.

“Miss Stark,” the editor-in-chief acknowledged, without looking away from her laptop. “You’re late.”

“I have something for you.”

“An exclusive with Mrs. zo Loraq is the only thing I want right now, Stark.”

“This is better. Maybe you wanna have a look, Chief,” Sansa snapped, exhaustion making her snippy, angrily sarcastic.

It netted Sansa some eye-contact. “Really.”

Sansa unsnapped her briefcase open, and tugged out the printout. Slapped it on the desk. “They’re accusing the Ghost of Hizdahr’s murder? I can tell you definitively - he’s innocent.”

“How?”

“I have everything about the Ghost. Every sighting, every kill, his combat style, his skillset. His height and his shoe-size. I know what sort of person he targets. I know how long he’s been active - and it’s lot longer than ' _since January'._ I have more intel in this article, ma'am, than the entire police force combined.”

Olenna watched her with those tiny, bird-like eyes, dark and unnerving. Sansa forced herself still, breathing out, and centered herself. _Poker face time, come on, Stark._

“Have you ever seen him, Sansa?”

Sansa stared at Olenna, let her lips do something derisive and irritated. “Respectfully, ma’am, he’s called the Ghost for a _reason_.” 

It wasn’t a _lie_. Not really.

“True enough.” Olenna scanned the first paragraph, and Sansa watched her eyebrows slowly rise. Halfway through, Olenna almost _chuckled_ \- holy shit. Was she having a _stroke?_  

“Congratulations,” said the editor, with a full and proper _smile,_ Sansa didn’t know what to _**DO** WITH THAT._  “You have the front page.”

* * *

“Okay.” Sansa sank into her chair, and caught the squashy blue ball Jon had tossed her neatly against her chest. “What do you know about Daenerys zo Loraq?”

She tossed it back, and Jon, picking it out the air, began to rattle off facts straight from memory. Mind like a steel trap, and abs like steel bands, _god_ _ **damn**. _ “She’s a Targaryen by birth, a minority shareholder in Targ Inc., born on Dragonstone but raised in Essos after Rhaegar and Lyanna were murdered and their kid went into witness protection. Five foot one, fan of Sinatra, likes the sirloin at Martineau’s, eighteen-handicap golfer. She’s the only living relation of Aegon Targaryen who, you know-

“Owns half of Winterfell, yeah, yeah.” Sansa frowns at Jon. “You’re forgetting the important bit.”

“No, I’m not. That’s all we’ve got on file.”

Sansa grinned. “Mm. The Feds made Olenna make me _promise_ not to put in writing, or like, _anywhere_  for that matter _,_ but the thing is- Hizdahr isn’t the **_first_** of Daenerys’ husbands to turn up dead.”

Jon goggled at her, mouth working open and shut like an incredibly stupid, incredibly handsome goldfish.

Finally, he managed to say, “There’s _more_ dead husbands?”

Her grin turned into a smirk. God, it was _nice_ to know things no one else did. “Just one. Drogo Dothraek. They married when she was 14, by consent of her older brother, Viserys - also, like, super-dead, by the way, everyone keeps _dying_ around this woman - and she miscarried his kid when she was 15 - see what I mean? -, and anyway, look- Drogo Dothraek was put on death-row when she was 19 for murder, extortion, violent assault, sexual assault, racketeering, human-trafficking, drug-trafficking, torture, just- everything, okay. _Everything._ ”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yep.”

“She testified against him?”

Sansa arched a ruddy eyebrow at Jon. God, he was so painfully _naïve_ sometimes, it **_scared_** her. “No, Jon,” she said, patient despite herself. “They were married. She refused to waive spousal privilege. She was… She was in **_love_** with him.”

Jon’s look of abject horror said everything she needed to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I shit you nay, in the 1990s, Clark _finally_ came clean with Lois, because they were engaged to be **_married_**. (Of course, then he died _,_ and the wedding got pushed five years, but that’s a story for another day…)
> 
>  
> 
> Varys’ last name, Nancy, is inspired by an alternate name of _Anansi_ , an Akan folktale character, who often takes the shape of a _spider_ -heh- and is considered to be the spirit of all knowledge of stories.


	7. Chapter 7

  1. in which robb is a screaming fishwife (heh.), theon is a Good Bro and there’s a lot of filler that goes nowhere (i didn’t mean to write so much filler, it just _happened)_



 

The rest of Saturday passed in a blur. 

She spent an hour and a half tussling with the copydesk over headlines - ‘It’s the _news!_ Not **_pulp fiction!_** ’ - before giving up, and dragging Jon out for coffee and rage croissants. 

They did their usual song-and-dance at the vendor’s - he tried to pay, she elbowed him out to split the bill, and Jon grinned at her, shy, red-cheeked from the wind, his hair a crying, gorgeous mess. 

Sansa felt a wave of happiness flood through her, felt her heart _squeeze_ inside of her chest- God, he was the _best,_ wasn’t he? 

Sansa had lived her whole life wanting nice things.  
She was older now, though. Smarter. Wiser. Nice things weren't meant for girls like her.

* * *

 

Sunday rolled around before Sansa knew it.  
Before, frankly, she was _ready_ for it.

The kettle was whistling away when Sansa pulled on a robe and got the paper, and then- stopped.

 

**_WHO IS THE GHOST?_ **   
_A conspiracy? A demon? A visitor from another world? What lies behind the mask?_

_By_ **_Sansa Stark  
_ ** _Senior Correspondent_

 

Huh.  
Her front page day.  
How the hell had she forgotten?

Sansa glanced at her phone, blowing up like she was Kim K post-sex tape, and irritably turned it off. 

It was already going on 9 am. Lunch was starting to loom like a Catelyn-Stark shaped thundercloud on the horizon, so she left the paper on her table, crisp and unopened. Instead, she washed her hair and shaved her legs and put on a dress, because Sansa wasn’t a great daughter these days, but. God. Even she wasn’t skipping out on Sunday lunch just yet.

Robb greeted her at the door - for a given value of the word ‘greet.’

Okay, look, he opened the door and screamed in her face - “Are you _mental_?!”

“Hi Robb.” She shucked her jacket and gloves in the hallway, pushing past him with a sigh. “Nice to see you too. Theon.”

Theon waved from behind Robb, slouching against a wall and smiling pleasantly. “Hey, Sansa.” Everyone thought Robb was the sane one in their relationship. Everyone was _wrong._

Robb trailed after her like a manic pitbull with abandonment issues. “What the hell is _wrong_ with you?!”

“I’m sure I’m about to find out.” She kissed Theon on the cheek and they went to the back garden, her hand tucked neatly into the crook of his elbow.

“He’s insane!” Robb screeched, arms pinwheeling in the air like a madman's. “He’s an insane, sociopathic _serial killer!_ And you write a- a-“

“It’s called an exposé.”

“- _about_ him! Are you so desperate for a byline you’ll put your _life_ in danger? Or did you actually  ** _want_** a bullseye painted on your back?! Because I’m not sure what’s worse!!!”

Sansa spun around on a heel, and snapped, “No, what I _wanted_ was to be **_screamed_** at my brother on my day off!” She glared at Theon. “Get this one under _control_.”

Robb stormed off - probably to vent to Mummy, the bloody  _snitch_  - while Theon pointed out mildly, “He’s my husband, not my dog.”

“Oh no,” Sansa muttered, sweet as citric acid. “I _like_ your dog.”

Theon twinkled at her. “Aww, that’s what she said,” and grinned even wider when Sansa rolled her eyes. “I read the piece, by the way. Sharp writing, kiddo.”

Sansa beamed, instead of making a _‘you read?’_ joke. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he said, with a warm smile of his own, and then pivoted on a heel, striding behind Robb, calling, “Oy, knobhead! Do you **_want_** the couch tonight, or what?!”

* * *

  1. in which there’s some minor ranting, great gallumphing loads of unresolved sexual tension - and let’s all keep in mind daenerys is the sort of person who thinks _‘we’ll tear down their homes!’_ makes for a good locker room speech okay, so she’s clearly, she’s got some issues. 



 

_The Emerald Ballroom  
_ _Septon Hotel, Winterfell_

“Lunch was all pretty much downhill from there.” Sansa squinted at the empty podium on the stage, annoyed. The banner behind it, all red and black and viscerally graphic, screamed, ‘VOTE FOR DANY!’ Yeesh. Not going for subtlety, were they, this lot?

“Awww. Sucks to be you,” Jon drawled in her ear, and- oh wow, he was surprisingly close, wasn’t he? “The rest of us don’t have your _front-page problems._ ”

Sansa twitched a little, turning over her shoulder to do the Look - the _‘don’t you sass me, child’_ Look she borrowed from Mum from time to time.

Jon grinned back shamelessly, and Sansa turned her eyes forward before he could catch her blush. “Shut it, Molestown,” she said instead, because if she didn’t, she would _one hundred percent_ just, like, slowly sink back against him and possibly, probably, _melt,_ and wow, now that she _knew_ he could kill it in the sack, it was _all_ she thought about _-_

Daenerys zo Loraq walked onto the stage.

She wore a pretty white sheath - Dior, last season, but beautifully cut - and smiled, that quiet, mysterious curl at the corner of her lips. 

“Hello everyone. Thank you for coming.” Ha. As if Sansa had had any _choice._ “I’ll get to my Mayoral run, but first - I want to talk about the Ghost.”

The cameras pretty much _exploded._

* * *

 

“…which is why,” Daenerys announced, several horrifying minutes later, as an enormous screen descended against the wall behind her, and a series of images began to appear, the Targaryen logo shining boldly in the background - riot police with shield plates and gas masks, CSI labs that looked like something out of Star Trek, soldiers marching down Winterfell’s streets, with, good  _God,_ were those  _tanks_ rolling behind them?! - “regardless of whether or not I win this race, I want to give back to Winterfell. I want to give back to this community. 

“I want to give, to the people of the North, the means to be able to hunt down and  _DESTROY_ this vigilante menace!” 

Daenerys paused for effect, the shadow of a smirk playing about her lips, and as if on cue, the lights flickered, and then went out. Sansa heard a sharp, aborted scream, and her _heart_ stopped. 

“Jon?” she called out, her voice going thin and high at the end. 

She turned a rough one-eighty and stuck her arms out. _Nothing._ “Jon! Where are you?!”

Her phone. She needed her phone, needed to get a light. She patted frantically at her pockets- _where was it, where was it?!_ There was a strange, sweet smell to the air, that reminded Sansa of- of- _Phone!_   _Got it!_ She turned on the screen, waved it around, but it was still hard to make anythign out. There was… Something in the air….? 

Sweet.  
It tasted.  
Dentist?  
_Nitrous oxide._

Her knees buckled.  
Fade to black.

* * *

  1. boy, this one's kinda stabby, isn't it? hide your eyes, children. 



Sansa woke up with a jolt, from the dizzying sensation of being roughly hauled to her feet. Something hot was at her back, something sharp digging into her front. A man. It was a man, armed with… a knife?

“Now, sweetheart. Stay very still, okay? Real steady.”

The emergency lighting in the ballroom had turned on, a faint, crimson glow suffusing the space. There were... intruders in the room. Men. Guns at the ready. Short-barrel, sub-automatic. Good for close-quarters urban combat. 

Dressed in black. Dark cowls. Long, liquid capes. Heavy-duty, thick-soled combat boots. It was a uniform.

They were dressed like the Ghost.

Half the reporters in the room had been knocked out. All the rest were cowering on the ground, shaky, whimpering, hands crossed over their heads. Sansa, and her captor, were the only ones standing.

No, not just them.

Sansa’s eyes went to the stage. Daenerys was on her knees, her eyes tightly shut, hands balled up into fists by her sides. Tears streamed silently down her face. There was a man standing behind her, the barrel of his Kalashnikov resting against the back of her head. 

“You’re in for a show,” Sansa’s captor whispered in her ear, hot air wafting across her neck. Sansa shivered hard, and the knife dug cruelly into the soft skin of her belly. There was a cold, sharp pinch and Sansa looked down, saw the front of her white shirt start to stain in a tiny dark patch around the tip of the blade.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press!” boomed the man holding Daenerys at gunpoint. “Welcome! We are the Night Walkers! We are the army of the man you know as Winterfell’s Ghost! We are his soldiers in the dark! We are the justice that Winterfell _demands!_  

“And you, my dear men and women, have been judged.” There was loud, groaning click. The leader had just turned off his gun’s safety. _Fuck. Fuck!_

“You have been found guilty.”

He raised his gun, shot into the air. “Guilty of failure to educate the Westerosi electorate!” He aimed at Maddy Polk from _The Torrhen Tribunal._ He fired. “Guilty of whoring yourselves to your advertisers! _”_ Andy Weingarten, _SLBN4._ Headshot. Dead before impact to ground. “To your corporate leash-holders!” Jessica Maureen-Fitz. _Barrowfeed._ Dead. Dead. _Dead._ “To your almighty fucking dollar!”

He moved the barrel back to Daenerys’ head.

“Guilty of feeding on Wintertown’s bloated corpse, so you can afford your little parties, and buy your shiny cars, and arm the police to keep you safe from judgement day. Well, Mrs. zo Loraq. The Night came for your husband.” He stooped down to stage-whisper in her ear. “The Night’s King sends you his regards.” 

Sansa shut her eyes. 

Something flew through the air, and a loud, heavy _thunk!_ echoed through the room.

That didn’t sound like a gunshot. Sansa opened her eyes. 

The man's hand was gone.  
His hand.  
Was.  
It was.

He was clutching his forearm, the geysering, bloody stump, baptizing Dany in his blood, _howling,_ naked horror on what was exposed of his face.

And then _Ghost_ was walking to Sansa, out of _nowhere,_ calm, unhurried, stepping over unconscious bodies easy as anything. His hand- _flashed._ He moved so fast Sansa had barely the time to hear her captor gasp half a breath behind her, before Ghost started to speak, his voice rasping, low.

“There is a blade embedded in your jugular,” he said to Sansa’s captor, in the same tone someone would comment about the weather. “Right now, it’s keeping the artery sealed, and keeping you alive. Drop your knife, I’ll leave the blade inside you, and maybe, _maybe,_ the ambulance gets here in time, and you get to see another sunrise. Touch her again, _hurt_ her again, make her _twitch,_ even, and I pull it out. And I _promise_ you, son, there’s no doctor in the _world_ who could you save you then.” The captor was making soft, subvocal whimpers of terror. “I’ll count to three,” the Ghost said quietly. “One. Two.”

The man dropped his knife. Sansa stepped away from him, and towards the Ghost.

He cupped her cheek. “Are you okay?” he whispered softly.

Sansa nodded. “Yeah,” she replied, scratchy, low. “M’fine. Go on.” She pushed against him weakly, mostly to feel him, to know he was there, know he was _real,_ that he _**came** for her._  “Get the bastards.”

There was a brief flash of white teeth, bared like an animal’s grin, and the emergency lights flickered out too, plunging the still, petrified ballroom into absolute darkness. She felt his fingers drift softly along her cheek, a firm, cool pressure against her bottom lip- and then she knew he was gone.

Then, the screaming began. Short, staccato bursts of wild gunfire. The sounds of men begging - _begging_ \- for mercy. 

And all Sansa could think of was the cruel satisfaction in her captor’s voice, the cold edge of his blade digging into her body, the look of unfiltered terror on Daenerys’ face, and she thinks -  _‘Make it hurt.’_

* * *

 

It was maybe fifteen seconds after things went dark and Ghost did what he did best, that the doors to the ballroom were rammed open and a SWAT team poured in, light flooding in behind them. They stopped short about in a foot inside. 

Sansa’s keen eyes swept the chaos left behind: The gunmen had been disarmed - _literally._  Their right hands chopped off, and they'd been left howling, sobbing on the ground, clutching dismembered stumps, like animals at a slaughterhouse. 

Ghost had disappeared. 

But across the stage, over Daenerys’ banner, over the projector screen, over the M1 tanks and marching, faceless soldiers, was a message, scrawled in blood - 

_THE NORTH IS MINE._


	8. Chapter 8

  1. in which The PlotTM advances about four millimetres, curls up into a ball and cries 
  2. AKA *cue your dirtiest Boyz II Men Slow Jamz playlist bc i REFUSE to apologize for this fic* *shakes fist at the skies, Bob Kane and our poor Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ* 



Sansa had just slipped on a robe and started to twist her wet hair up into a towel when the doorbell rang. Fuck it. She could ignore it, right? Right. Definitely. God, she was so _tired._

It rang again. Longer, insistent. 

She dropped the towel. 

Christ. What kind of _jackass-_ She stomped up to the door and slid open the peephole cov- oh.

It took some fumbling with the latch and the double-locks - agh, tired, tired, _tiiiiiiiiired_ \- but she got it open. 

“Jon?”

He stared at her, as if uncomprehending, for a long minute, before taking a long-legged stride into her apartment, kicking the door shut and crushing her into a desperate hug. “Thank god, thank god,” he was mumbling softly into the curve of her shoulder, the motion of his lips doing awful, terrible things to Sansa, as she tentatively looped her arms around his shoulders - fuck, like _granite,_ what did he _lift?_ Semi-trailers? Small housing complexes? - and then gave up the fight, sinking into him, letting her knees buckle, letting him take her weight.

Jon didn’t seem to mind at all, pulling back just enough to kiss her brow, her temple, to take a deep shuddering gulp against her hair, and mutter, “I’ve been looking for you for _an hour,_ where’ve you _been?!”_

She buried her face into the hollow of his throat, breathing him in. How did anyone smell so _good?_ It was- illegal, probably, outlawed in twelve states and he was on the lam. “Right here,” she whispered back. His skin was silk-soft under her lips. “I- They made me give a statement, and then Dad turned up, and the EMTs- Jon,” she sank her fingers into his hair and pulled, forced him to _look_ at her.

His eyes were dark, blown.

Sansa swallowed and asked the question anyway - “I- I looked for you. When it went dark. I _looked_ for you.” She didn’t mean to sound so- accusatory. It just. Came out that way. “Where _were_ you?” and her voice broke. “Where-“

He was cupping her face, smoothing down her hair, running his thumbs under her eyes, across her cheeks, touching, touching, like he wanted to drive her _crazy-_ “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I got pushed- there were some people making for the exits, and it was so dark- I just got out, before they turned on the electronic locks, and I had to get the police, get you out- Thry took me down to Police Plaza One, they made me give a statement too, you know how it is, and then I came looking for you,” and his words were tumbling over themselves now, rushed and frantic, and Sansa could see his pulse jackrabbiting in his throat while he relived it, “Went back to the hotel, checked the hospitals, even the _office,_  Jesus Christ, I've been scared out of my _mind."_

His hands were shaking so badly Sansa could feel the _buzz_ of them, almost, wrapped around her waist, sinking heat into her skin, and she whispered, "I'm here," dragging her lips to the corner of his eyes, "I'm here," to a bristly cheek, "I'm here," and she kissed him, gentle and chaste and closed-mouthed, and Jon made this sound, this broken, shuddering groan, like something fracturing, an ice shelf cracking away into the ocean. His grip became painful, one hand coming up to cup her jaw, to prize open her mouth ruthlessly, tongue delving between her lips like he had something to steal, to _take,_ to **_prove_** \- He'd been pushed past some invisible limit; his kisses were hard, grasping, all teeth, and Sansa had to push him away with both hands against his chest, so she could _breathe,_ writhing against his body, chasing, chasing a high. But Jon didn't mind, was past caring, hands tugging the belt of her robe open, parting it open, and she was naked, just like that, panting, flushed, thighs a little slick already. Jon had gone a little still, but his eyes were heavy on her, dragging down the ripe, high swell of her tits, the taut line of her stomach, the triangle of dark, auburn curls, glistening wet, his gaze as heavy as a hand could ever have been. 

"Fuck. Look at you." He cupped a breast, stroked the hard, tight nub of her areola, lifted it high, and then, without artifice or pretense, just- just bent down and took her into his mouth, hot, wet heat tightening over her skin, the sharp point of his tongue flickering over her, and Sansa- Sansa couldn't- her hands clawed over his shoulders, raked down the slippery smoothness of his cotton shirt, and it struck her, this- this power differential between them, her naked and willing and _pleading,_ and Jon, clothed, powerful, in perfect control-

Except no. She could feel him tremble, feel the way he bit down gently, over her nipple, and rested his forehead against her collarbone when she cried, " _Jon, oh god,"_  no, he was affected too. He was. He was. 

Jon's hands moved lower, stroking the trembling line of her thigh, and then he was buckling, falling down to his knees, his hands digging into her hips, Sansa was going to have _bruises_ , and oh- she didn't mind, she didn't, her thighs clenched together instinctively, she wanted every bruise, every mark- 

"You're not allowed to do that to me again," Jon said, soft, guttural, his words cored out and harsh. "You're not- You can't _do that,_ do you understand?" his words a command even when he was on his knees, and Sansa says, _'yes, I promise, I swear,'_ and, _'yes,'_ when he pressed a kiss at the apex of her thighs, and parted open her slick-wet folds, _'oh god, yes,'_ and licked, a hot, broad stripe along fragile, rose-pink skin, salt on her lips, salt on his, _'yes, yes, yes.'_

* * *

Her hands fisted against the wall, because she didn't want to pull at his hair, that shit _hurt,_  but Jon was pulling at her thighs, tugging them over his expansive shoulders, "That's it, sweetheart, ride me, ride my mouth, come on," his nose dragging against her clit in ways that made Sansa see _stars._  She knew she was saying something, or maybe it was just his name, maybe it was just noises, whimpers, moans, and Jon was fucking her with his tongue, one finger, then two, "Open you up, fuck, baby, gonna take you apart, you're so tight, so _tight,"_  kisses scattered over the freckles near the hollow of her hips, over bone and fragrant skin, "Can you come for me? Just on my fingers? Sansa, baby, just like that?" fingers digging into her ass, mouth working over her clit, tireless, endless, molten heat, and Sansa's orgasm caught her unaware, an explosion, all electricity, dwarf stars going nova behind squeezed-shut eyes. 

* * *

They made it to the bedroom. 

By grace of some minor divine intervention, probably, but mostly because Sansa slumped over, boneless, running her fingers through Jon's hair, still balanced between his _shoulders_ and the _wall,_ what the hecking heck, still dazed in the afterglow. Jon got to his feet, sealed his mouth over hers and picked her up, easy as breathing. 

And sure, Sansa went running when she could and skipped a lot of meals because that was the job, but she was _tall,_ okay, like _model-tall,_ and she wasn't _light,_ the Starks had always had bones of steel. But Jon didn't even seem to notice that, kissing her as he walked into her bedroom, dropping her gently on the mattress, climbing over her body, and kissing her, endless, hungry, his cock hard and digging into her stomach through his trousers, hands roving, ungentle, just the way she needed. 

She fumbled at his belt, unbuckling, unzipping, palmed greedily at the sizable bulge through his pants, felt him groan against her throat and grinned, stroking roughly, making Jon buck into her hands, uncontrolled. "Off," she said, urgent, breathing hard, "come on, take it _off_ ," because Jon had gotten too impatient to strip obviously, he still had his shirt on, still had his _socks_ on, and that- that seemed genuinely tragic somehow. Absurd and tragic. Why the hell didn't they ever have time for _Jon_ to strip down, Sansa wanted to know. She wanted to _map_ him, wanted to taste his skin, wanted to tie him down and take her _time,_ jesus christ, she wanted- wanted- 

“Can I- I need to-“ Jon was saying, a tight dark band across his nose and cheekbones, and Sansa jolted into sudden, immediate awareness - he’s shoved his pants down at some point, he was hard, wet with precome, smearing a damp patch against her thigh, sweet Christ he was big, how did they even make that _work_ last time, but instead she twisted her legs around those impossibly narrow hips, locked her ankles at the small of his back and _writhed._ Jon groaned, harsh, sounding like he was in _pain,_ and Sansa bit the soft, soft skin of his ear, mouthed along the shell, whispered, “Fuck me, come on, fuck me baby, you can do anything, anything you want,” and he _does,_ and it’s. God.

Sansa strangled on a moan, back arching off the bed, and Jon wasn’t even trying for finesse now, hips pistoning in short, brutal drives, hipbones crashing in a way that can’t be anything but painful, grinding against her clit with every thrust. He groaned each time he bottomed out, this raw, ugly bullet of a sound, like this hurt, like _they_ hurt, and Sansa was crying, tears leaking out the corners of her eyes, nails scoring red lines down his back, digging into that perfect ass, whisepring, “I’m close, I’m close, don’t stop, please don’t stop-“ but Jon groaned, low and long, shaking violently as he spilled inside of her, cllapsing over her, while her cunt was still clenching around his cock, on the edge and sobbing with it, the _bastard,_ the absolute _bastard,_ god she needed- she needed to _come._

"Geroffme, dipstick," Sansa mumbled against his shoulder, elbowing him in the side until he pushed up on a forearm and shoved his hair out of his eyes, carelessly, sweat-sheened and _glowing._

"What..." His eyes drifted down to Sansa's fingers, rubbing hard against her clit, hips stuttering off the bed, almost, _almost-_

"Ah. Damn." There was a faint, soft press of lips at the corner of her slack-open mouth, and Jon said, "Let me." He was kneeling between her thighs, slipping his hands under her ass, cupping, squeezing, lifting her glistening, red-raw cunt to his lips, his come trickling out of her still, and nosing through her curls, fastening his lips around the pearl of herclit. He _sucked,_ hard, ruthless, and Sansa arched off the bed, lifted off on her ankles, on a _scream,_ and Jon rewarded her with three fingers in her dripping wet pussy, fucking hard and fast, just the way she needed it. 

"Come on, sweetheart, just like that, say my name, I want you to-"

"Jon, oh god, Jon, don't stop, don't _stop-"_

"Never, baby, never, come on, come for me, now, now-"

Sansa gasped, and sobbed, and felt the wave crest, and shatter, and _soar_. 

* * *

When she came to, swimming from underneath the blissful languor of the afterglow, Jon was perched at the edge of the bed, his back to her, still as a gargoyle. Sansa felt her throat swell horribly, and she closed her eyes tight. Breathed in and out. Made sure her voice was okay. 

"Are you going?" she asked softly, hoarsely. _Goddammit_. She wasn't supposed to sound so... **_Damn_** it.

She forced her eyes open. 

Jon turned over his shoulder, looked at her, wide-eyed, a little lost. "I..."

"You don't. You don't have to. You could." Breath in. Out. "Um. Stay."

His eyes widened a little more. _Oh god. Oh god. Why couldn't she keep her goddamn_ _ **mouth**  _ _shu-_

"Uh. Okay."

 _Wha..._ "Okay?"

He swung his feet over onto the bed, slid down, until his face was pillowed next to hers. Their fingers tangled on the cotton bedspread in the space between their bodies, and it seemed, somehow, more intimate than anything they'd done all day. 

"Staying. Sounds... Yeah."

He squeezed her fingers. 

She closed her eyes, snuggled under the covers, and squeezed back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *drowns in a puddle of sticky, horrible shame* i am sorry. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every single comment: I'M SO GLAD HE STAYED.  
> my bitch ass: *squirming guiltily* uhhhhh about that.

Sansa woke up, sometime just after dusk.  
She woke up alone. 

Well.   
That made things pretty clear. 

* * *

 

  1. in which beth is the world's greatest sidekick, sansa is the smuggest motherfucker you ever done seen, and daenerys gets shaded like nobody's business.



Fifteen minutes later, the lump in her throat had fucked off - _finally_ \- and she got up. 

Made the bed. Put on some coffee. Febreezed the crap out of her apartment. Lugged the typewriter out from under her bed, a big, glossy old Underwood Dad had gifted her on making Senior Correspondent. 

She took a deep breath, and started to type. 

* * *

"Hey Beth."

Beth _screeched_ Sansa's name over the other end of the line, and Sansa carefully shifted her mobile away from her ear, still typing furiously.

"Please stop screaming. I need your help."

Beth started saying _yes, of course, anything, I'm so glad you're okay,_ in that tone that suggested she would happily sign over her firstborn if Sansa asked nice. 

"How are you with Photoshop?” 

Sansa paused, listening to Beth. 

"No, I don't want to _fake_ a **_murder_** , Bethany, what kind of hobbies do you _think_ I have- Um. Don’t answer that. I have a- Look, I have a couple of photos, is all. They could use a little cleaning up." 

Another pause. 

"No, I can't email it to you. Or upload anything to the server. I need you to come over, with your laptop. You know my place?"

* * *

Beth reached seventeen minutes later. 

"So," Beth chirped, peering around Sansa's crappy apartment with open curiosity, "this is all very black-bag, superspy, hush-hush stuff. What's up? You write another Ghost story or something?"

Sansa arched an eyebrow at her. 

"I was kidding! Sansa? _Jesus?!!_ How the _hell_ did you write _another_ Ghost story?!?!!"

Sansa waited. Beth was a pretty smart kid. 

"Oh my god. Were you. Did you tape it. While almost getting _murdered_. Or like. Film it. Photograph it. Is that what the photos are? SANSA." She was literally- Beth was literally _clutching her scalp_ like a psych ward inmate from a bad slasher flick. "SANSA. YOU _DIDN'T_."

Sansa opened the photo gallery on her mobile and laid the phone flat on the dining table, turning the screen towards Beth. 

“Oh sweet mother of fuck,” Beth muttered, staring at the phone with something between horror and awe, “you **_did_** , of course you did, you're like the James Bond of reporters, I bet you got audio and _everything_ , they're going to give you _awards,”_ like Sansa was about to contract gonorrhea, or a terminal form of cancer. 

She grinned. 

The copydesk would eventually change it, Sansa was sure, because copy didn't think reporters knew how to write headlines, but right now, the top of her sheet read:

 **_3 DEAD, 12 INJURED, IN DEADLY SHOOTOUT AT SEPTON HOTEL_**   
_Vigilante ‘Ghost' neutralized gunmen before local law enforcement could arrive on scene_

_By **Sansa Stark  
**_ _Senior Correspondent_

The article didn't even mention Daenerys zo Loraq by name until the third paragraph. Sansa took a special pride in that level of pettiness, and didn't particularly give a damn if that made her a bitch.

Besides. She was pretty sure she was making the front page tomorrow. Again. 

* * *

 

 

 

  1. poor jon. poor, confused baby jon, with his stupidly beautiful face and massive levels of damage, and poor sansa, what the fuck did she do to get dragged into this drama. nothing, that's what. 



Sansa woke up for the second time just after midnight on Tuesday morning. 

The article had been written, proofed, revised, copy-edited and sent to the printers. If it made the headlines on the evening news shows again, Sansa was asking for a raise. 

Right now, though, all she wanted was to get _warm_. Sansa tugged her quilt tighter around her shoulders and glared at her stupid, draughty bloody flat. 

…only, it wasn’t **_ever_** draughty. The building was ancient and everything, but the super was a legitimate Good Guy, and there was sealant in every nook, ledge and cranny. But the cold didn’t care. A brisk, icy breeze swept over her anyway. Sansa looked to her right. The window? 

The window was closed.   
The window was...

Sansa's heartbeat sped up.   
Okay. 

"Look," she said, at a perfectly normal speaking voice into the ‘empty’ bedroom, "could you please not lurk? It's rude."

There was a rustle somewhere to her left. "How could you _possibly_ know."

Sansa didn't yelp. She _DIDN'T._ Sansa was an _investigative journalist_ , okay, she interviewed warlords and mob bosses and Fortune 500 CEOs, she had Great Balls of _Fire_ \- some guy in a rented Halloween costume wasn't gonna fuck with her. 

"Hey, Ghost." Sansa sighed into her pillow. "You left my window open, asshat. Do you know how much I _already_  pay for heat?"

Ghost folded his arms and glared _._

Seriously, she had been almost murdered, righteously fucked into a wall, and summarily abandoned in the last 24 hours. What the fuck kind of damage did Ghost think **_he_** could do that hadn't already been done to her?

"Shut up," she grouched, and yawned hugely. "Could you, like," she waved at the space on the bed beside her, “close the window and siddown or somethin'. I don't have the energy for drama.”

He pushed the window closed and hovered uncertainly near her bed, like it was a death trap waiting to be sprung, not a mattress two inches too thin that she should've replaced sometime in the last century. Maybe that’s why he left, maybe he- _shut up shut up._

"You found out about the article, huh?" Sansa asked her pillow. 

Ghost stayed quiet. 

"You mad?"

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, voice artificially lowered to growl. Still, Sansa squirmed on the inside, just a little. It was a good voice. 

"Yeah, buddy, I wasn't really worried there."

He exhaled angrily. "You _should_ be," he snapped, like he was trying to warn her away. 

Wow, he was seriously committing to the whole Edward-Bella vibe they had going, huh? Like, complete with the creepy stalking and sleep-watching and everything. _What a giant freak,_ Sansa thought fondly. 

"Okay, sugarpunch. Whatever you say." She cracked her jaw on an enormous yawn, and rooted around her bedside table drawer before snagging the remote and turning on the TV. 

"What." Ghost paused. She could _hear_ him blink. "What are you doing."

"Well, you're here, I'm here, and I'm not gonna fall asleep again. So. Netflix? How do you feel about Mean Girls?"

"Mean Girls," he repeated flatly, like he had some giant vendetta against punctuation. Seriously, would an inflection kill him?

"Show some respect, dude,” Sansa scolded absently. “It's a classic of our time."

On the crappy, blue-tinged TV screen, that somehow, magically came with an internet connection, Lindsay Lohan flickered into focus, beaming, all fresh-faced and shiny, talking about what it was like to grow up different.

"Boo," Ghost said, his voice still amazingly flat, “you whore."

Sansa snorted and flipped over the covers. "Get in, loser."

He got in.

* * *

 

 

 

 

  1. 'i see dead people' (yeah, well, sansa sees a ghost, kiddo, so your life ain’t half bad, is it?)


  1. or, the one in which he stays



The shrill ringtone of an incoming call jerked Sansa up out a very pleasant dream, involving a naked Aaron Samuels licking chocolate sauce off of Jon’s abs. “ _Grffaagh_ \- I’m up, I’m up, wha- _Ghost?”_

He was smirking at Sansa. Hang on a second - she  _dozed off_ on his **_shoulder_** _??!_

_…and he let her?_

It was still dark out, and the only light came from the TV screen. Cady Heron was snapping off pieces of her Spring Queen tiara and tossing them into the cheering crowd. Ghost's arm was draped around her shoulders, warm and heavy, her back half-curled against the hard ridges of his armored chestplate.

“You fell asleep,” he said, soft, a little hoarse from disuse. 

Her phone continued to ring, loud and insistent, but Sansa’s heart was doing this awful, flipping thing, too fast, too fast, leaving her dizzy, spaced out, _wanting,_ hopelessly, endlessly. She swallowed hard, and whispered, “You… You stayed.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Yeah,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “‘Course I did. You asked me to.”

It was like a switch had been flipped, like all the hurt from waking up and finding Jon gone- gone- _he left me, he left me, heleftme, heleftmeheleft-_

All the hurt she had ruthlessly quashed, buried, rising to the surface like corpses in a flood, it was filling up her ears, a great tsunami of sound, a roar like the ocean at storm, because he stayed, Ghost _stayed,_ and it didn’t matter, didn’t matter that she didn’t know who he was, didn’t know what he looked like, what he sounded like, what his name was. It didn’t matter that he had commandeered justice to fit his twisted ideology, that he had _killed_ , that he had the blood on his hands, _none of it._

Because he stayed.

She asked him, and he _stayed_.

She leaned over, careful, shaking in every bone, and kissed him, cautious, terrified, wondering in some part of her if he would dissipate like a mirage, fade into shadow like his namesake. But he was real, and warm, and _here,_ and he had _stayed-_ so she kissed him, _aching,_ closed lips against the soft skin just beneath the edge of his cowl.

She pulled away with her eyes shut, scrambled to the other side of the bed, grabbed to her phone, and slid to answer.

“Stark here.”

“Sansa!” Margaery called breathlessly. There was a hubbub of voices around her, like she was someplace crowded. “Babe, you gotta get down here!”

“Margaery? Where’s ‘here’?”

“The Targaryen manor! Brentwood! They’re opening it up!!!”

“What? No, that’s not possible. That place belongs to-“

“Aegon Targaryen, yes, Sansa, doll, you won’t believe this," Margaery breathed, all gushy and low, like someone was paying her hard cash to sound like a nympho phone-sex operator, except _no,_ she just **_got like that_** around old money, "but Barrowfeed’s saying Aegon Targaryen's coming out witness protection, he’s coming back to Winterfell! …hon? You still there?”

“I’m… I’m here.”

“Listen, it’s cra-a-azy down here. I need cameras! Get your girl, whatsherface, Becky? Bessie? They’re opening up the manor in less than an hour! Can you make it?”

“I- Yes. Yes. I’ll be there, Mar.”

Margaery whooped, and hung up with one last reminder to, ‘get your ass here _quick!’_  Sansa let her phone slip out of nerveless fingers, and shivered when a cold gust of chilly spring air hit her full in the back. 

When she turned around, the window was shut, and Ghost was already gone.

But that was alright.

Her eyes felt dry. Her throat felt dry. She dragged her hands through her hair, and flopped back onto her bed, feeling light, silly, free, suspended in sunshine. 

The smile on her face was wide, helpless, breathtaking. It was entirely honest.

* * *

 

 

 

 

  1. mr. targaryen will see you now (OH YES WE’RE GOING THERE. THIS IS HELL. WELCOME.)



When Sansa stepped out of her apartment building, there was a dark, shiny Bentley idling at the curb. A young man, short, heavyset, with kind, dark eyes stepped out, and waved to Sansa. She glanced over her shoulder - huh, no one there - and tentatively waved back.

“Miss Stark?” He stuck out a hand, in a dark, fuzzy gloved. SAnsa grasped it and they shook. “My name is Sam Tarly.”

“Hi? Can I help you, Mr. Tarly?”

He smiled gently. “Sam, please. My father’s reserved sole rights on ‘Mr. Tarly’. I’d like to help _you_ , actually.”

Well that sounded… unpleasant. “I didn’t know I needed help.”

Sam reddened at the sharpness of her words, shaking his head and laughing a little shyly, before he said, “No, no, I- Oh, I’m making a mess, aren’t I?”

He was so… earnest, was the thing. Like a kid. There was something about him that reminded her of RIckon, and Sansa, because she was a giant ball of _mush,_ seriously, it was a legal _handicap,_ okay, she said, “Not at all, Sam,” as warm as she could manage it.

“Thanks,” he said wryly. “I s’pose I should start by telling you I’m Aegon Targaryen’s lead publicist.” 

Oh holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph. 

Oh fuck. 

Was this… Was this _**happening**?_  

“My firm has been tracking your coverage of local politics over the past few months.” Past few _months?!!_ “We’ve been very impressed, by your writing, your objectivity, your ethics.” How did they track _ethics?_ You couldn’t _do_ that - you’d have to know what _didn’t_ go into the article to track _ethics._ He was _clearly_ lying… Or the Planet had a mole. Christ. What. 

“Which is why we’d like to offer you exclusive interview rights for Mr. Targaryen’s return to Winterfell.”

There was a faint buzzing in her ears. Oh god, was she gonna faint. This would a _terrible_ time to faint. “The Planet, you mean,” Sansa corrected, weakly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re offering exclusive interview rights to the Daily Planet.”

Sam smiled again. “No, Miss Stark. We’re offering it to _you._ ”

* * *

Sansa entered the Targaryen manor from a relatively private back entrance. It led into a shaded walkway, and opened up into immense, beautifully manicured gardens. Sansa could hear the faint burbling of a fountain, the odd, lonely cry of a bird so far past sunset. It was hard to believe the property had been abandoned for so long, that nobody had lived here for years…

Sam walked a step ahead of her, and Sansa followed him into a beautifully appointed manor. The evidence of neglect was more obvious here - dustcovers over most of the furniture, a lingering smell of stale air throughout its rooms. Sam paused by an ajar door, and gestured to the library inside, with another brief, slightly impersonal smile. “He’s waiting for you.”

Sansa nodded. 

This was going to be like no interview she’d done before - Sansa had had no time to prepare, but even if she had… What would she have prepared for? No one knew anything about Aegon Targaryen, except those details that had been publicized when his parents died. 

Lyanna and Rhaegar Targaryen, the country’s sweethearts, visiting a petroleum refinery in Dorne, ACE Chemicals Ltd., along with their son, Aegon, who’d just turned twelve. An engineered malfunction in the system, somewhere, a sudden, controlled explosion, perfectly timed to take out the Targaryens. They had all… burned to death. All except Aegon, who was flung clear of the fire by the blast’s shockwave.

The detective assigned to the case had been a pair of young, but highly decorated war vets - Ned Stark and Rob Baratheon, and they’d managed to wring impossible, horrifying confessions from the factory’s foreman, from the semtex supplier, from the man who constructed the detonation device.

The blast had been engineered.

Who had masterminded the assasination, it was never discovered. But it was certain, by then, that young Aegon’s life was very likely in danger. Witness Protection Services had stepped in, and whisked the boy away, and that was the last the country had heard of Aegon Targaryen.

Until, Sansa supposed, today.

She knocked on the door to the library, and entered.

This room had been turned out perfectly, restored to its former glory. The wood gleamed with varnish, the sidetables boasted enormous, stunning arrangements of wildflowers, the air was redolent with the scents of pine resin and old paper. Last rays of lights poured in through the mullioned west-facing windows, and the man himself was silhouetted against them. 

He wasn’t particularly tall, but he was built like a quarterback, or a professional wrestler. Enormous shoulder, biceps straining at the seams of his perfectly tailored suit jacket, narrow, elegant hips, a large hand holding up a cut-crystal glass of whiskey, the other tucked into his pocket.

Aegon Targaryen was dark - he took after his mother, Sansa supposed - and hair had been shaved closed to the scalp, left long on the top for a look that was almost… military. In fact, everything about his bearing screamed military, the shoulders thrown back, the feet placed wide apart, the upward angle of his chin.

“Mr. Targaryen? I hope I’m not intruding.”

He turned around, and Sansa stopped in her tracks, when she came face to face with… with Jon Snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOOK PLEASE JUST TRUST ME.


	10. Chapter 10

  1. hi, my name is (hi, my name is)


  1. will the real slim shady please stand up?



They say your life flashes before your eyes. 

Sansa’s read that line half a hundred times if she’s read it once - when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. If that’s the case, then she's pretty sure she’s just about to drop her fuckin’ wicket.

It’s the past _eighteen_ _months_ on replay. 

Meeting Jon, that first day when he stumbled into her and she dumped half a melty-cold, soy quadshot caramel frappucino all over his shirt. He’d laughed it off, and after Jimmy-From-Sports lent him a Winterfell Warriors hoodie, he’d even insisted on replacing Sansa’s drink.

The first time they’d done a feature together, on that case about Private Gloria Vasquez’s dishonorable discharge for violating DADT, before the repeal. She remembered how angry he’d been, the flash of his eyes, that quiet, neatly hidden reservoir of passion that made Sansa see him not as the new kid, but as an equal.

The first late night, tossing a ball as they considered new angles to write a week-long series on the Congressional budget hearings on defense expenditure. All the late nights that followed.

The quiet, steadiness of his presence when she broke the story about Cersei Lannister working with Roose Bolton to tamper with election results, and received death threats in the mail, everyday, for months.

Jon, teasing Beth like she was a bratty kid sister, and gently bullying her into actual breaks where she left the office and put food in her mouth.

Press junkets and long lunches, evenings at the office where they talked everything and nothing, Jon’s lazy, long-winded rambles about Asimov, his fond half-smiles when she ranted about Men Who Quoted Atlas Shrugged, Fuck ‘Em All.

A whole relationship.

The most significant friendship of Sansa’s adult life.

Based on a…

“Why?” she asked finally.

“Why didn’t I tell you who I was?”

Sansa blinked at him. “Are you fucking _stupid.”_

Jo- _Aegon_ recoiled.

“No, you absolute clothead,” Sansa barelled on, anger, anger was a nice strong emotion, Sansa _liked_ anger, “I actually do understand the concept of _witness protection,_ I write about the mafia for a _living_.”

“Then… I don’t get it-“

“Why tell me like _this?!”_ Sansa burst out. 

“I… I thought you’d rather find out from me directly. Rather than…” He gestured vaguely to the side - Sansa assumed the front door was thataway, and the surging horde of reporters somehwere beyond it. 

“You could have _told_ me. In actual _words_. You could have, maybe, I don’t know, taken a breather and mentioned that you’re _not actually Jon SNOW!”_

“Yes I am.”

Sansa frowned. “I beg your pardon.”

“I _am_ Jon Snow,” J-  _Aegon_ countered. “I was Jon Snow when went to Oldtown. I was Jon Snow when I got my degree in Criminology. When I joined the army. When I went north of the border. When I _buried my friends_ after the war. When I came back home, and got my masters. When I joined the Daily Planet.” He stepped a little forward, in her direction, as if he couldn’t quite help himself. “I was Jon Snow when I met you.”

Sansa exhaled shakily. How… What is she supposed to _say_ to that?

“Sansa… _Say_ something.”

“I can’t do this,” she blurted out, and then jammed her mouth shut. _What the fuck._

Jon looked… like he’d been hit. Like she’d slapped him across the face. Jesus. Jesus. That’s not what she meant.

“That- That came out wrong.”

His nostrils flared. “No,” he bit out. “I’m sure it came out _exactly_ right.”

“No,” Sansa retorted fiercely. “I mean. Ethically. I can’t interview you, because. Because of us.”

Something flickered in his eyes, something wide-open and dark, like longing, or an abyss. Sansa couldn't tell. “Because of us?”

“Because we slept together. Twice.”

He pulled back, visibly, flattened his mouth into a hard line. “Right. Of course.” 

“I need to- I need to call Olenna.”

“Sure,” he said, his voice painfully level. Scraped clear of all emotion, and it _hurt_ to hear him that way, hurt deep and cold, and Sansa held on to the memory of Ghost’s arm around her, the deep timbre of his voice, the clarity of that feeling, that sharp, blossoming warmth every time she was around him. God, what the hell was  _wrong_ with her.

“I’ll give you the room,” Jon said, and Sansa practically fell on her ass in her haste to back out the door.

“No,” she said, “no that’s fine, I’ll just-“ and then she was out, thank God, digging through her laptop case for her phone, when she felt it buzz thrice in sharp, short burts. Incoming call.

She pulled it out. 

Dad?

Slide to answer.

“Hey dad. What’s up?”

“Are you the one at his place?” Ned asked, without prompting.

“What?”

“At Snow’s place. Or Targaryen. Whatever he’s calling himself. Are you there?”

Her jaw dropped. “How the hell do you _know_ that?”

“You have to get out. Sansa, kiddo, you have to move.” 

There was a sharp, hard strain of urgency in his voice, and Sansa responded to it instinctively, orienting herself south, from the sunlight streaming into the house, and maknig her way rapidly though long, deserted corridors, until she’d entered the south gardens. 

“Dad. What’s going on?”

“We ID’d the men at zo Loraq’s press conference. They were all soldiers. Men who went north of the border during the incursion, before we signed the peace treaties with Rayder.” 

“Soldiers? _Our_ soldiers?”

“Yes. Sansa, what do you know about Jon’s time in the Army?” 

“That he was in the army,” Sansa replied promptly. Had the gardens always been so big?

Ned sighed. “Right, well, I’ve been talking to some of my old friends.” Sansa knew that when Dad said ‘old friends,’ he usually meant things like, oh the guy who runs NATO, or the Head of the Joint Chiefs, and you know that nice lady who came for your sixth birthday who also heads up the NSA?

“Uh huh, and?”

“And it turns out Jon’s role during the war was pretty… interesting.”

“What? His file’s… classified? Redacted?”

Ned laughed, sarcastic and short. “I wish. No. His file’s missing.”

“Say that again.”

“Missing, kiddo. What we know so far, from unconfirmed sources, is, apparently, at some point during the war, after the death of Captain Qhorin, Jon Snow goes missing. Six months later, he turns up again, gets promoted to Major, and we have our first major victory against Rayder. A year later, Rayder comes to the table, we negotiate a truce and declare the war over. The kid comes home, just another ordinary soldier, goes to J-school on the government’s dime and- Well, you know the rest.”

“Dad… You were saying you ID’d the attackers. The… uh, the Night Walkers?”

“They were all soldiers in Jon Snow’s unit, Sansa.”

“What the fuck.”

“That’s what I said,” Ned agreed. He sounded tired.

“But I don’t get it! Why would _Jon_ want to hurt Daener- _oh._ ” 

“You see it now. Daenerys is a Targaryen. She’s running for mayor of the sixth-largest city on the continent. She wins, she accrues massive political capital. And if she had gotten Aegon declared legally dead, somehow, the entire conglomerate of Targaryen Industries would’ve passed to her.”

Sansa thought about the conversation they had had.

_“We need to stop her,” Sansa had said about Daenerys Targaryen, and Jon had barely hesitated before asking, “Okay. How?”_

Had that been the moment?

Had that been when he decided what to do?

…Christ, was she so ready to believe Jon could _do_ that? 

Could orchestrate a murder? In cold blood?

What. What was _wrong_ with her, why was she- God. God.

“Sansa,” Dad asked. “Are you out?”

She had her hand on the gate. _Push,_ she told herself. _Push. Now. Get out of this mess._

She stepped back. “Yeah, Dad,” she lied, soft and warm and _lying._ “I’m out. Thanks for calling.”

“Keep away from him, Sansa. I know he’s your friend-“

“He isn’t my friend, Dad. I hardly know him at all.”

“OKay,” Dad said softly. “Okay. That’s good to hear, kiddo. Stay safe.”

“You too.”

She hung up, took a deep breath and turned around.

Faced the house once more.

Maybe it was time to just do her job.

* * *

  1. she loves me.  
she loves me not.  
she loves me.  
she loves me n- _what?_



Jon looked up from his phone when Sansa entered the library again. He almost looked... surprised. "So. What did Olenna say?"

"I didn't call her."

His brow creased. "I... Okay. Then why..."

Sansa stood by the armchair opposite his, in front of the fireplace, and dug out her notepad and a brand-new recorder. Stupid, goddamn klepto-ass vigilantes. 

"Shall we start the interview, Mr. Targaryen?"

His brow cleared up, throat working hard. 

 _I can't trust you,_ Sansa didn't know how to say. _I can't trust you because you've been lying to me from the day we met, and I can't, but I want to, don't you see I want to? Give me a reason to trust you, because I don't want to lose this, I don't, please please._

He heard it all, somehow. 

"Jon, please," he corrected softly, rising to his feet, and walking to her, slow enough that she had time to tell him to stop, to not do this, to back away. But she didn't. She didn't. "Call me Jon."

They were barely inches apart when his hand came to cup her jaw. 

"Jon," she whispered, and the ice in her chest cracked and dissolved. She wondered if it would always be like this, between them - this white hot lance of desire, every time he got too close, to want skin, to taste his mouth, to hear the sound of him when he was aching, shaking, burning with want for her. 

She wondered if there would always be secrets she wouldn't be able to tell him. If there would always be secrets he wouldn't tell her. 

Maybe. Maybe. 

Was it worth it?

Sansa sighed, drained. His lips came down to brush hers, soft, a little chapped, and Sansa felt her insides _squeeze,_ hopeless already, gone for this boy with his too-dark eyes and too-soft voice and all the things he held back, all the things he revealed. 

Was it worth it?

Yes, yes, yes. 

"Do you trust me?" he asked against her mouth, and Sansa stilled. 

Did she?

Her heart was in her ears. 

Did she trust him?

"I-" Her phone buzzed against her hip, and Sansa pulled it out on instinct. 

"Olenna?"

"Sansa. I'm so sorry," Olenna said, and ice trickled down Sansa's spine. Olenna never said sorry, and she sure as hell didn't ever call Sansa anything other than _Miss Stark_. "You need to get down to One Police Plaza. There was an attack on the police station." 

_Oh god. Oh god no no_ _NO._

"We're still working on a- a body count from St. Jonnel Memorial, but- I'm sorry, Sansa. It was the Night Walkers. They've taken the commissioner captive. They’ve taken your father."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someone please beta this disaster for me i'm dying

**Author's Note:**

> remember to subscribe for updates, and hit kudos if you liked it! <3


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